Late comment but: I look at it as a necessary evil. I usually solve it by having a note of the intermediate understandings / thought process on OneNote when I

Late comment but: I look at it as a necessary evil. I usually solve it by having a note of the intermediate understandings / thought process on OneNote when I am debugging something deep. It probably takes 2 minutes to get back on the train when disturbed. Yes - I do debug production systems / file system level issues / Storage level issues etc. And yes I am a senior engineer who keeps getting walkin / IM requests. The flip side of saying no to meetings/walk ups is that the senior won't be doing a good job of unblocking the team. It is a huge waste to leave a bunch of junior engineers solving the same issues that you had solved years ago. Mentoring takes a hit and morale takes a dive in that case.