> Automation is an ideal, but not a necessity

You're just bad. You automate specifically to take the human error risk out of the equation, that's a part of what it means to be competent. We don't automate our deploys because it's an ideal that is not a necessity, but so some jackass doesn't delete a configuration while also never putting it into a backup, or source control, or on their dev machine, ad nauseum.

It's not an accident that some of us have been working 20+ years in this industry and have never been the cause of something like this.

> Automation is not an answer that can always be applied trivially; especially retroactively. Even despite all the marketing that will tell you otherwise.

shit, I guess I didn't read the right pamphlet...