Its sad, but it sounds like you have had bad managers.

I myself am a mid-level manager. I have 1x1s with my employees. I also have 1x1 with my manager (the CTO).

I personally look forward to my 1x1 with my manager, the CTO, each week. I find them very useful. Without them we always meet in the context of other projects and often around other people. Having dedicated time to talk one-on-one is very nice.

I know that my employees enjoy one-on-ones with me, because by default I generally only schedule them biweekly (every-other-week). But many of my employees go over on time each meeting and many of them request meeting weekly.

We discuss goals, difficulties, challenges, successes, and often even personal things (only when provoked by the employee, I never ask personal questions or personal topics myself). The 1 on 1 meetings are the best true barometer for how an employee is doing. Some employees might be overwhelmed, but don't show it in other meetings. 1 on 1 meetings give me an idea for how they are truly feeling. I might even invite them for time off (we have unlimited PTO) when hearing things in 1x1s.

A bad manager might make 1x1s worthless. If that's the case you should look at other teams or companies. Life is too short to work under bad managers.