Look, I’m just the messenger here but believe me when I say that your concerns and criticisms have been mutually been made by MANY Plex users about various IMPROVEMENTS that could have deeply impacted our very own workflow as Plex Server Administrators. I totally agree with you. Many and I mean many individuals on this forum along with other Plex groups such as Reddit, are already developers or in the IT industry themselves, with just as long of experience as you have.
However, despite any or all criticism that’s been made on our front as users, we are simply at the mercy of those who are actually working at Plex along with their corp execs.
Most of what will be suggested to you in the form of suggestions are mere MacGyver like solutions that often require third party tools.
I don’t know what to tell you but welcome to the land of Plex. The mods and Plex staff will simply tell you to vote on a current Feature Suggestion that’s still available to vote on, if it’s applicable or similar to your request. Otherwise, create a Feature Suggestion Request of your own to have people in the forum to vote on. If you take a look, there’s requests for server to server syncing 2016 and earlier.