That’s called ‘editing’ and I’m not sure but it sounds like you’re implying the practice undermines the quality of work like photography, when in fact it’s arguably a more important part of the practice than aiming the camera and releasing the shutter.
You will inevitably get 10 good shots out of thousands if you randomly take pictures everyday, anywhere, anytime. You can judge the quality of one's work only by its consistency, not by cherry-picking.
I’m not really sure I’ve ever heard a photographer aside from Hype Williams tout the efficiency of their use of film as an important thing about their work, and I know I’ve never heard anyone cite it as a reason a photographer is good at their craft.
Many photographers, including some regarded as the best portrait photographers working today, take photos by running the motor drive, generating up to 10 images a second, doing so in bursts through photoshoots that can last 30 minutes to hours, in the end only choosing one photo of thousands to present as the result of that session.
You’d have a hard time convincing me that a subjectively equivalent image that is the product of a shoot where the shutter is pressed less often is the work of a ‘better’ photographer. The number of images rejected from an edit just isn’t a factor in the quality of a photographer’s output.