I don't have much experience with Thread + Matter (except the only device I have, an upgraded Eve Energy being a PITA), but for Zigbee/Z-Wave you do not have to be an amateur network engineer. Pairing is really straightforward and devices will automatically mesh and get routed by most mains-powered Zigbee/Z-Wave devices. It's not like you have to set up DHCP, manage an IP address range or anything like it.