Engineer and developer from Oslo in Norway. I have played with IoT since 2007. Starting up with homemade stuff, then buying bridges/hubs and testing different gear at home. Had my own smart home company in 2013, but I started to work as solution and systems architect for the Norwegian police IT- unit and did smart home as a hobby since.
What surprises me is how long thing takes to become a defecto standard and how long it takes to implement stuff.
The software architecture and designs are poor and it shows that companies are making stuff for profit because a lot of IoT stuff is proprietary. Hope to see more generic stuff in future and less difficult to integrate. I hope Matter/Thread will be a game changer, because we are all sick of 100eds of hubs and gear that does not work or is a hassel to connect.