I've been self-hosting my email for a little over 2 decades.
The basic setup has more or less stayed the same, but there's some more extra components around it you have to know now (spam filtering and SPF/DKIM/DMARC come readily to mind).
To quote Michael Lucas: "everything complicated about emails revolves around spam and not getting it". I highly recommend his book, "Run Your Own Mail Server".[1]
In short, hosting your own email is not that bad at all. I strongly suspect, like many other skills, since it has atrophied with the advent of the cloud and people readily giving up to the large carriers, it has gotten the reputation of being hard, or as you said, a full time job. I don't think either of those things are true.
The basic setup has more or less stayed the same, but there's some more extra components around it you have to know now (spam filtering and SPF/DKIM/DMARC come readily to mind).
To quote Michael Lucas: "everything complicated about emails revolves around spam and not getting it". I highly recommend his book, "Run Your Own Mail Server".[1]
In short, hosting your own email is not that bad at all. I strongly suspect, like many other skills, since it has atrophied with the advent of the cloud and people readily giving up to the large carriers, it has gotten the reputation of being hard, or as you said, a full time job. I don't think either of those things are true.
[1] - https://mwl.link/run-your-own-mail-server.html