I personally spent some time studying Houdini decade or more ago but found a company would be reluctant to build their toolset on Houdini base. Same story in a way with Substance Designer actually which nobody uses really but me. Then I found all I ever wanted to do in Houdiny like complex arrays and scatter systems are…
Worth checking the fbx dialog is set to Media&Entertainment . Helped me few times with 3dmax glitches and smooth groups should be definitely off for import. Otherwise any custom normals would be ignored.