[onion2k]

I think I can manage myself well enough and when I need his help or vice versa, I just schedule an hour together.

A lot of people don't do this, and your manager has no way of knowing whether you will or not. Some devs will just sit and be unhappy for months and then leave. Your manager is trying to do better and give you an opportunity to proactively raise things. Maybe he also wants to make sure you know about changes ahead of time. These are positives.

I have monthly 1-2-1s with my boss, and I check in weekly with my team. Those meetings are scheduled for about an hour, but if everything is fine we just end the meeting after 2 minutes.

It works pretty well.