[Kiro]

"once removed" is such a strange term to me. It reads like they become first cousins only once something unspecified was removed. Like "once the tumor was removed the patient survived".

I'm obviously not a native English speaker.

[OJFord]

'Removed' is (also) used like degrees of separation, if you're familiar with Bacon or Erdos numbers for example. 'I took the leap into management, but my current role still isn't that far removed from programming'.

The 'once' here means 'one time', not 'when it has happened that'. cf. my 'twice removed' example above.