Some context could be found in Discord. TLDR is tsc --noEmit --watch finishes immediately, but ember serve takes a few seconds when a TS file changes. Running it with DEBUG=ember-cli-typescript* shows:
file changed helpers/create-immediate-value.ts
⠙ building... ember-cli-typescript:typecheck-worker Typecheck starting +339ms
⠏ building... ember-cli-typescript:typecheck-worker Typecheck complete (0 diagnostics) +5s
cc @dfreeman