> “You’re a senior engineer - why did fixing this take so long?”

exactly!

If a senior engineer is responsible for the problem, but he wasn't given room to develop a proper solution in the first place, then he cannot be blamed for the outcome. And yet, this is exactly what happens.

If a system had been made well, and functions well, same senior engineer does not get the credit for not causing problems!

This is what happens when management/stakeholders don't understand what is going on, but have an expectation that is not well communicated to the engineers (and also inversely too, where engineers are not communicating the situation properly to management - or they refuse to hear it/ignore it).