1 on 1's did not use to be 'a thing', and we still got plenty done in those days, which were not that long ago.

Generally ideas like this seem to spread because it was part of some successful company and so it got written up and now a lot of people copy it because it's easy to copy and they think it will help make their own company successful.

As a result, the thing that actually occurs in a lot of places is a manager reading from a script that they've been trained on a little bit from someone else.

It does not feel useful to me.