For SM devices I find solder braid is indispensible. Lets you get solder off with no damage. When I worked in Dublin, I had a tech who was brilliant with SM devices, at the time I hated them ... so used to through hole. He never lifted a track, and I once got him swapping RAM chips between two boards (to try to find a fault) he didn't even bat an eyelid. What a star.

I was so impressed, I got him to show me how he did it, this was his method.

Soldering : paste the site with flux, solder two opposite corners then go pin by pin with finest iron and thinnest solder. Braid everything at the end to get rid of excess, no track damage. Check for shorts, you need a meter with very sharp probes. Also a decent eyeglass, the type you can hold in your eye, and plenty of light.

For removal, plenty of solder, just keep stroking up and down each side with the iron while teasing body very lightly with tweezers. When everything gets hot enough off she comes, then make with the braid to clean up.

But now BGA's have happened we're all up the creek. Time to enter the software profession for real.