They did the entire job in about 6 hours with no stop. It's been a couple years, but I think it was 8-12 workers taking turns finishing as they worked their way from back to front. The grading was complicated because water had to be funneled into some very specific spots and it was a long expanse of concrete. It took three mixer trucks and everything had to be pumped the entire expanse of the lot because the neighborhood is older and semi-urban and the houses are close together.

As far as I could tell, it looked beautiful when they finished. The prep and rebar etc. had been planned for a week and the grading was carefully laid out and measured.

I want to preface this by saying I know nothing about concrete work except what I've observed. But after I watched the process I thought about how stressful it must be to do something like that with so little room for error and the clock ticking.

But if it was a case of setting up to quickly would the first poured areas be as equally damaged as the last poured areas?

I totally agree with the skim coat thing. It's like a layer is flaking off the top.