I'm not against stand-ups per se, just against daily stand-ups. Currently I'm in a team which does three a week. That's at least tolerable, but if it was up to me, I'd opt for once a week. Daily made me feel that I had no agency over my work, that everything to the tiniest detail needed to be negotiated with someone, most often the manager. Less agency means lower engagement in work. At least for me. I do know that there is plenty of other people who are different.
My standup messages are mostly "I'm working on adding feature X, it's going well", or "I'm fixing bug Y, and I wonder how to handle Z".
Usually that's it. Sometimes there are questions or discussion about details. It serves to keep the team aware of what's going on.
If your team is argumentative it can drag out and be a drain. That's when it is up to the manager to break it off and move any needed discussions somewhere else. If your manager is the argumentative one... you have a bit of a problem.
These stand-ups get in the way. I'm bored when I need to listen to what people have to say, or worse, what they are making up. I'm stressed by what I need to say or make up. They take time. They often happen at a time where my productivity would be the best / when I'm in the middle of something, or else I need to rush to get on time. Or to watch for the time when we are close and interrupt everything I'm doing. This, every single day. It's fine for meaningful meetings solving real problems, but stand-ups are not this kind of meeting for me.
I very much prefer not having a daily synchronization point, and instead give status to relevant people when needed, or give my status when asked for (which is not too often, we can see what tasks is left for me in the bug tracker). If I'm blocked or if I have a question, I'll ask. If colleagues have a question, they'll ask.
We have flexible hours, not at exactly the same timezone, some people are already full of important meetings. Not having a standup to babysit, to schedule, to watch for and to be stressed about is one less problem to handle.
I'm thrilled to be able to start my work day when I'm ready and not having to interrupt for this daily thing that does not seem to bring much value in the end. I'm happy to be able to have an unproductive day and make up for it the next day without nobody noticing it and without me lying about it, because in the end, it's none of nobody's business and it doesn't matter. And the day is just a bad unit of time for development tasks most of the time.
When I had to attend daily stand-ups, indeed standing-up (wtf!), I just had the impression we were (treated like) a bunch of children not able to be autonomous for a few days.
But then, it seems everybody in my current team is wired for working efficiently without this kind of things, so it works for us. We are also good at knowing what people are on to by the reading the stuff they are discussing on the chat, and the big picture, fast, weekly status update we have anyway. I don't need the details brought by the stand up, unless I do but then I will get them via efficient communication anyway.
