The reality as you get more and more senior is your manager will most likely have more reports, and almost certainly have more problems under their scope. In fact it gets to the point where they are almost guaranteed to have at least one enormous burning fire active at any given time, simply due to the size of their org.

To navigate this, you must take the initiative in your career development and communication with managers. Understanding what you want to be optimizing for (career growth, work/life balance, new skills, etc.) and clearly communicating your desires is crucial. Be proactive in bringing information and suggestions to your manager so they can focus their limited time and energy on solving problems for you instead of guessing what you need.

As you become more senior in your career, demands on your time will outstrip the hours you’re willing to work, no matter what. Your time, focus, and energy is perhaps the most immovable constraint on your output. There is a very real ceiling on the useful output hours you get per week – while you can raise the raw quantity of hours easily enough, it almost certainly comes at a cost on quality short term and sustainable energy longer term. So instead of adding hours, focus on making a fixed set of hours really count.

I always try to remember two golden rules of managers – they’re often busy juggling many problems unrelated to you, and they cannot read your mind. 

I have heard (and have also sometimes personally felt!) complaints like “my manager isn’t offering me the opportunities I want” or “my manager doesn’t get what I care about” or “I don’t care about my job” or “this company doesn’t support my growth”. These are both 1/ valid feelings I don’t want to pretend aren’t real and 2/ frequently unhelpful framings. Both are something you can directly improve with a little bit of honest communication. 

You own a system. You are obsessed with your users. You are building value as fast as you can for them, your laggard dependencies be damned. Where dependencies can't keep up, you solve problems yourself!

You have seen the dire warnings from stagnant, slow bureaucracies. You've seen them calcify because they were too tied to other parts of the business. And you know that you won't end that way. "Decoupled" is your watch word and you're determined to stay nimble however you can.