The premise and the story don’t really match up to me. It sounds a lot more like you had a manager who claimed they were going to shield your team but did it p

The premise and the story don’t really match up to me. It sounds a lot more like you had a manager who claimed they were going to shield your team but did it poorly. When you have an actual umbrella, you can still see the rain. You still know how hard it’s raining and what way the wind is blowing. But you get less wet than if you didn’t have the umbrella. A manager can help stabilize incoming requests, and help filter out / deprioritize / deflect noise from elsewhere in the business. A bad manager can surely do so in a way that is detrimental to the team, but a good manager can do that and still make sure their team has context and connection to the rest of the company.