You are so naive you don’t get it yet?

All of “adult” life is performative . Life is a game, a performance, a little play you put on for the benefit of all.

Consider this: if management thinks something is impressive, well that makes it impressive. Managers, by definition, manage people, and having 1:1 meetings helps with that. Are you supposing managers also make the same exact effort and contribution as ICs? Would they still be managers?

Do you have an engineering license? Are you personally liable for the code you write? No? Guess who else is “cosplaying as engineers”?