My biggest surprise? That I'd become amateur electrician. Twenty years in this business, and I still find myself with a multimeter at 3 AM because the PDU reporting disagrees with the smart strip, and "remote hands" swears the circuit is fine. Mark my words: power costs will eat your margins before bandwidth ever does. The cloud spoiled everyone into forgetting that electrons cost real money.
By year two you'll own your own crimping tool and dream about phase balancing. By year three you'll be arguing about NEMA configurations at parties. By year five you'll look back at your cloud bill and laugh, then cry, then laugh again. The industry is cyclical. We're all coming back to bare metal eventually, and nobody will remember why they left.
IPv4, IRC, and irssi — fight me