Annually? You think the right cadence to see if one of your direct reports is progressing toward their goals or having difficulties is once per calendar year?
Most of us are "trained" not to "bother" our managers so allocating some dedicated time is valuable in my experience.
I'm honestly baffled at the pushback against 1:1s I'm reading. Assuming you have a relatively normal number of direct reports for software engineering (5-10) that adds up to not a lot of hours.
At companies without regular 1:1s, I often had no idea if my manager thought I was doing a good job or not. You can say that this is bad management or bad communication, and you're right but management and communication tend to be rather poor in our industry! 1:1s are more often than not a part of the solution.