I'm at a tiny startup right now as an engineer, not mgr, and I have weekly 1:1s with every other member of our team. Especially now during remote work, it's a godsend for getting to know teammates.
"Go meet Jake on the 3rd floor". Some you had to do in sequential order, but other than that, we were turned loose to roam the halls, take the elevator/stairs and solve the hunt in whatever order we wanted over the course of about a week.
Turns out, Jake is the person who also handles payroll and direct deposit. You'd stop by, do your payroll stuff, have a little "getting to know you chat", he'd put his initials next to his spot on your scavenger hunt sheet, and give you a clue to how to find the next name or hunt item on the list. All of them directly related to something you would have had to do anyway to get 'onboarded' as a new employee.
It was fun, it was engaging, but it was also highly useful and germane to the usually boring tasks of "fill out this form to get paid, now fill out this one to get insurance, now this one for..."
But if I put in the effort, I could also be a much better artist. Or a much better cook, and there are plenty of venues that would be good for it.
I get along fine with my coworkers. In all the horrible peer-judging that goes on in Google performance reviews, "Hard to work with" almost never comes up for me. Nor does, "doesn't know what is going on". Nor does, "I wish they would be more socially confident."
I get along just fine. But enforced social time with people who I'm not doing projects with? No thanks. I'll do my job, communicate about my job in the standups and whatever normal checkins we have.
Fortunately, my skills are in high enough demand that if a role puts more social demands on me, I can just bail for another team or company. It's nice that way.
Now, regarding social time with people I'm not doing projects with, I'm all for that, since information does not always flow freely within a company, and talking to people on adjacent projects could lead to new knowledge or collaborations, or at least be set up for such. It's also good if you become a hub of information for other teams, as that increases your value to yours and the teams you talk to. Information is power :)
Of course, as you said, you have to weigh this against other skills you can spend time on, it all depends on what you want from your career. If you desire to move up the hierarchy, soft skills such as this will grow in importance, as your work shifts from being neck-deep in technical details, to negotiations with other teams on how to achieve large initiatives. It's easier to catch someone's ear to talk about something you'd like to get done when they have a positive social impression of you.
For example, Google has dozens of interest-based groups, some of which I go and participate regularly and positively (not going to give too many details here), and get plenty of gossip from that. I participate in several job-adjacent team chats, where I learn about projects and contribute where I can.
One of my best interactions came from seeing an old teammate in an MK and they had a problem that we talked about. That was great and fun and interesting, and built plenty of social capital. But we had something to you know, actually talk about instead of make work.
Not everyone wants to move up the hierarchy--doing perf as an IC is painful enough. Doing it as manager would make me want to stab myself. ICs become less and less common as the level increases.
They are different things. I help people who need help, comment on design docs, and wish people happy birthday, have a good vacation and whatnot.
Required strolling with random people or going to lunch is not the same thing.
You do you too. If you love those things, great! Not everyone does.
You should consider how assuming, "Everyone works like I do, and can benefit from the same things I like" may be biasing you against people who don't think or act like you, or are not emotionally rewarded by the same things you are.
Don't know how many different firms you have worked for, or how many different groups you are in, but I have worked in enough different positions with enough different teams in enough different roles to know that this style works awfully well for me. And given the various successful projects I've been a part of (not all, of course), I'm reasonably sure that this style hasn't held me or the teams back.
Of course, in a way this means I agree with you - if you are not someone who wants to be on a team that spends time and energy on the warm and fuzzy team building tasks... quitting probably is the right move. There will be other teams that work better for you.
"I get paid to write code, not to be a human!!!!"
It's pretty obvious the bias here if you flip things. We all know that both emotional labor and physical/technical labor are required to get the job done. If you said everyone would only be rated on hard metrics around their social abilities, and the programming would be left up to whatever each person feels like, it would lead to technical chaos. I doubt anyone would say, "That's so infantilizing. We're professional programmers we don't need these hand holdy forced "engineering architecture" meetings. Just let us code together and I promise we'll build the product the right way, and on time."
In the same way, if you don't explicitly plan and architect the culture at your company, it can lead to similar chaotic situations. People only associate organically based on similar background, similar interests, similar personality, etc. This leads to basically every single bias that everyone not a white/asian straight man has been screaming about for decades in tech.
I have talked about this before here, but I don't really understand this idea companies have about promoting/demanding social things at work, or having a dedicated 1:1 block with managers. Are developers so social awkward that you need to have someone higher up blocking time for you to talk with people/managers?
Whenever I have an issue with my work/company I just do a 'hey, when do you have 5 minutes, need to have a chat about something' message and then talk with the manager/person about it. These 5 minutes chats have been as small as 'want to spend some time with my kid so will take a couple long weekends' to 'i am not a good fit for this company, so I will be resigning by end of day'. Never had to have it scheduled like I am a fucking 5 year old that needs an adult to time box his life.
Obviously it's not a perfect approach as one cannot force candor or trust, and frequency must be tuned to the needs of everyone involved.
I've heard of companies assigning people to walks. The idea is you go for a 20 minute walk with a random person (until you've gone with everyone), and you're supposed to talk about your job and how its going etc etc. You're also getting a break from the office, some fresh air, and some physical activity.