Anyone can learn to handle sm in a few days. It’s nice to have a good hot air rework station if you do a lot of it though, and a little refrigerator to store your solder paste in.
Handling BGA (ball grid array) ICs is a pain... takes a special workstation with a microscope to do it well.
I have always hated soldering PL-259 connectors to coax.
I used to sell Japanese "rework" equipment. No "vision" (microscope)
If the board failed, my equipment could "desolder" a BGA, and resolder it on a new board that had a failed BGA. Or whatever.
The equipment was "low tech" and very manual. No "vision." Which drew raised eyebrows!
But it was profoundly accurate.
It could replicate the original heat profile to ensure that the BGA wasn't subjected to heat beyond what it could endure. I sold several of them to Lucinet Tech back in '98. I removed and replaced 3 BGAs on bad boards. When they exrayed the boards, my reworks were 100%.
Lucient in Texas bought 3 units. The nice thing about my rework stations, you could teach ANY high school grad how to use it in about 2 days, and could rely on them to use it correctly!
So, for minimum wage, you could save thousands of dollars in chips.
You guys in the business know what I mean.