There are also a lot of competent managers that are lazy (laziness can be good!)
And, worse perhaps, there are a lot of incompetent managers that are NOT lazy.
Now, the OP is a specific point of view. It's not unprofessional to have a clear cut point of view on some arbitrary practice.
It's no unsympathetic neither demotivational: from my pov, it's rather a sign that everything may not be lost in IT if there are still people thinking differently.
> they demoralise developers and make them want to change jobs
I kind of get what you mean but not because you made a good point.
People are demoralised because they are lazy/unmotivated and cannot perform, once they slack off, they cannot communicate out of shame. So even though it seems that they fear the status update, the culprit is the fact that they are not motivated at work or have poor work ethic.
In oder to fix this, sometimes getting a new job where you do what they like works.
Another comment mentioned things like geekbot which is text-based async stand up, you might want to try that. The key thing here is recording progress so that people can coordinate, it has nothing to do with you reporting to the manager.
And, worse perhaps, there are a lot of incompetent managers that are NOT lazy.
Now, the OP is a specific point of view. It's not unprofessional to have a clear cut point of view on some arbitrary practice.
It's no unsympathetic neither demotivational: from my pov, it's rather a sign that everything may not be lost in IT if there are still people thinking differently.