My personal experience at at large tech company is that there are usually designated teams thinking about these infrastructural problems so that the rest of the

My personal experience at at large tech company is that there are usually designated teams thinking about these infrastructural problems so that the rest of the engineers don't have to worry about them. So as someone managing a "service" in a company that has a SOA model, sure, I'm technically a part of a distributed system but the deliberate abstractions minimize the "necessary" exposure to dealing with distributed systems. I'm in complete agreement with your thoughts on stuff with practical significance vs theoretically interesting topics (I'm far more interested in building some expertise around practically significant things first.) Are there any particular projects you'd recommend I follow to grow my knowledge in this space? Alternatively, would you have any recommendations on specific side-projects that could really motivate a good understanding of these concepts?