[a_c_s]

It depends on how toxic the rest of the organization is.

I've worked at places with a healthy culture (very little shielding was necessary) and I had awesome, close interactions with end users and the business side of things.

I've also worked somewhere where the culture of the executive team was bad and my manager (who was awesome at shielding things from the team) left.

This lead to close interaction with people who will insist that 7 different things can be the #1 priority for a single person. Or executives who repeatedly make people work nights & weekends to hit an internal deadline only to find out the internal deadline is weeks earlier than the client's actual deadline.

In the latter org the more time went on the more I missed my shielded ignorance of the rest of business's demands.