No, the upper level person in question is overbooked with being in charge of 1/3 or 1/2 of the company's employees. My personal opinion is that person was given too much responsibility too quickly and is in over their head. When my team came into their purview they told us they wanted to spend as little time as possible on my team, and I've deferred to that statement.

> When my team came into their purview they told us they wanted to spend as little time as possible on my team, and I've deferred to that statement.

That sounds like a pretty effective way of hurting morale.

I've seen this before, and generally think it tends to be because technical people who have risen to the top as the org grows don't like giving up power, so they end up holding control over way too many teams/depts and the org suffers for it. (or it's a naive cost saving measure)

I would like to see a comparison of org-charts in highly functioning corps of varying size.

to my outsider ears, this sounds exactly like the sort of situation where you should request a meeting and highlight the issue. Not in a finger point-y way, but as an observation that your team needs more time from someone at their level