When I say “studying,” I don't mean I’ve been secretly building distributed systems for 3 years.

I mean I’ve been reading whitepapers and architecture docs, trying to understand how these systems actually fit together and why they’re designed the way they are.

For me it was more of a "top of the iceberg" approach so that when I talk to a true engineer, I’m not speaking in vague product language.

You're spot on though about using AI to help this learning curve.

Thanks for the comment.