I hate 95% of "Agile" (i.e. wolf-in-sheep's-clothing micromanagement) but I actually think that a daily standup is often a good thing or, at least, a necessary

I hate 95% of "Agile" (i.e. wolf-in-sheep's-clothing micromanagement) but I actually think that a daily standup is often a good thing or, at least, a necessary evil. In organizations, people will form suspicions, e.g. "does that guy actually pull his weight?" It's not a good thing. It's not what people should do. It's what they will do. Standups allay that suspicion. Of all the political games that an office environment can make you play, standup is one of the easiest ones, and that's good because even with the losses you mentioned (such as regaining focus) it's limited in the amount of time it takes, and you still have 50-65 percent of your time for real work, which is 3-4x what many programmers get. One way managers could minimize disruption is to walk up and ask developers what is going on as often as necessary on a per developer basis. Impromptu status pings are more disruptive (and, in some companies I've seen, obnoxiously frequent, like 1-4x per day) than scheduled status meetings. If you've decided that you need status updates, you should have the standup instead of having the whole office on edge all fucking day.