Is Automation Killing The Engineering?

Is automation killing the engineering? When MTV first appeared on air, the first video it played was, “Video Killed the Radio Star.” Fast forward a few decades and I have to wonder if automation is killing the engineering. In the early days of virtualization the administrators were expected to be proficient via the command line and to be honest if you wanted to really understand how things worked, command line administration was an absolute must have skill. Virtualization has evolved from those early days with more and more features and services getting added to the infrastructure that the need for the vast command line skills seem to be fading as the technology continues to mature. Looking forward where cloud computing is working to achieve complete and total automation, I have to wonder how administrators will handle the stress of getting issues resolved when automation is not an option.