• Start with Fargate or Lambda for compute unless you have specific EC2 needs—avoid Elastic Beanstalk’s opinionated PaaS approach • AWS egress fees are 9¢/GB vs DigitalOcean’s 1¢/GB flat rate (9x difference)—inter-AZ transfer costs add up to surprise bills • Generic AWS knowledge is B-tier ($124K), but specialized tool expertise commands premiums: AWS Lambda $127K, Redshift $134K, Elasticsearch $139K • EKS Auto Mode (announced re:Invent 2024) automates node management, storage, and networking—makes Kubernetes easier without eliminating the learning curve • AWS makes 197 price changes per month vs Azure/GCP’s few per month—pricing complexity and hidden costs are the biggest pain points • Real money isn’t in knowing AWS—it’s solving expensive business problems with specialized tools (Redis, Elasticsearch, NLP) that happen to run on AWS