I had a similar experience to this at amazon. I think the nature of programming work is so murky that it makes sense to do this even if you don't care about the employee (though my managers genuinely seemed to). What I mean by murky is that similar looking amounts of work can take 2 days or 2 weeks depending on how excited the engineer is about the project. Maybe it's more common with engineering managers for this reason?

I spent nearly a decade moving up within another hugely successful tech company and every manager I ever had took time with me once or twice a year to discuss my goals and to outline steps I could take to reach them. Perhaps this is a cultural trait of successful companies (those dominant within their field) that helps them reach such heights.

When companies treat their employees with respect like this, good employees end up staying longer and accomplishing more, which is good for both parties.

"I spent nearly a decade moving up within..."

That's a characteristic of lifetime employment, not the kind of jobs under discussion here.

I'm curious...are you still in touch with those managers? Did their efforts convince you to maintain a relationship even after you left?

At five years there, I have yet to have that conversation. 1:1s are either what I'm working on or more promises about "this will make a really strong promotion case." Namely motivation for working on whatever shit work needs doing next.

Some Google managers are good, some are average and a few are not good at all. Try to work for the first ones.

How to do that? That is the hard part, net work and move on when you work for a bad one.

Might be time to find an organization that believes in a mutual relationship, I'm afraid.