I feel like the "I'm swamped" situation is more of a defense mechanic than it is genuine swamping in many cases.
Take the following example: You understand parts of the business that are critical. Those parts are high stakes. Someone asks you something about it and you give a legitimate answer that is correct. You will form a habit in that person of asking you since it's lower risk and far easier than coming up with the answer yourself. In many cases, the only way to wean this off is to instead say sorry I can't get at that right away but if it can wait (x) I can look at it. In many cases the solution will come around on it's own as it is time sensitive.
Anyone in that position will, over time, recognize this and leverage it. Couple that with the fact that any exceptions that happen out of the ordinary will wind up in your purview.
Of course, this is not true of all swamped people - some are just legitimately swamped and don't have enough time in the day to do the workload requested of them - but the guise of a key senior engineer this is usually the case I've seen.
Take the following example: You understand parts of the business that are critical. Those parts are high stakes. Someone asks you something about it and you give a legitimate answer that is correct. You will form a habit in that person of asking you since it's lower risk and far easier than coming up with the answer yourself. In many cases, the only way to wean this off is to instead say sorry I can't get at that right away but if it can wait (x) I can look at it. In many cases the solution will come around on it's own as it is time sensitive.
Anyone in that position will, over time, recognize this and leverage it. Couple that with the fact that any exceptions that happen out of the ordinary will wind up in your purview.
Of course, this is not true of all swamped people - some are just legitimately swamped and don't have enough time in the day to do the workload requested of them - but the guise of a key senior engineer this is usually the case I've seen.