There’s a huge gap but at the same time, each layer is still very similar to each other.

Hardware engineering might be floor 1 of a building and microservices might be floor 19. Yes, they are very far apart, but one day, you realize that every floor has a bathroom. When you go down to floor 1, you might not know where the bathroom is but you know that it exists and how it will probably function. You are already 80% of the way there.