Any evidence for them being a fad? I definitely remember my parents' generation having dedicated one-on-one meetings with their managers on a regular basis, regardless of what field they were working in (skilled labourers, but none of them in tech).
The first 15 years of my career, up until roughly 2010, I had no regular 1:1's in tech. Managers were generally more technical also (they would do non-critical path dev work.) Today there is more separation between "people management" and "technical management." Usually one or the other suffers.
