This is a sad truth of today's OEM industry. They are under such pressure to develop a product and handle the financial risks associated with recouping cost of development, that the engineers working on the product are utilizing a majority of their time optimizing performance based on reference designs provided by component suppliers.
The component suppliers, on the other hand, in their bid to maintain monopoly, are aiming at creating an ecosystem that is increasingly rigid. Any attempt to integrate different products from competing vendors, is met with the need to dedicate most engineering efforts towards mediating conversations between vendors, on how best to work together. The OEM ends up paying the vendors for this support as well.
The engineers lose their edge on subject expertise and instead become experts on getting things done. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it does distance an engineer from the books they held so dear.
To combat this kind of memory loss, I have decided to make a list of essential concepts, the derivations of which are essential for the engineer working in the RF industry.