Being 2 steps separated is no problem for me. Can you point to any specific production software systems, for which the author of those systems says they used CT for designing stuff, and that it helped in a meaningful way? The only one I have heard of is UMAP, and it was closer to "plain ol' category theory" rather than Petri nets or any of the stuff the applied CT folks do.
Category theory is useful for thinking about X, X is super useful for modelling and designing Y.
X in {Petri net, relational algebra, feedback diagrams, type system, ... } and Y in {communication protocol, database, programming language, ... }