Eh, not really. Not all engineers work in high-pressure environments where focus is essential. Some senior engineers really enjoy teaching others. Some of the best mentors I've learned from were the ones who were happy to spend an entire Friday afternoon showing me how they would solve an interesting problem.

Helping a junior and maintaining relationships with your fellow seniors is a part of the job too.

But surely there's ways of doing that without making people lose their focus.

Such as assigning times for focused vs collaborative work.

Yes, a vibrant meme room in a "management expects you to respond to business issues in this room" channel on <slack|teams|etc>

Actually, is there?

Yes, you pick the moment (much) better than wandering over to peek over their shoulder when 'something interesting is going on'. IMO that's exactly when you don't, ask them about it later.

To borrow from that cringeworthy scene in The Social Network: He's wired in!

also, imo explaining something complex to someone junior often leads to answers to other questions. For some reason, talking through code out loud helps the problem solving process.

Which is _okay_ as long as it doesn't happen too often. I work remotely now, but most offices have conference rooms or quiet spaces or respected headphones on policies for when you need headsdown time. If there's no way to signal that you are busy, then that's probably a separate issue than the 3 cases here.

The first one, less so. Explaining what you are doing to someone (as long as they get the basics) can be a great way to cement your understanding of what you are currently doing.