[cparedes]

Kick off Puppet/Chef runs? It's not too hard to automate these tasks, either (or even put a fancy interface around it, though of course this takes a bit more time.)

It's also a bit insulting when you say that we 'in fact [do it] by hand', because sysadmins, as a whole, strive to not do that. Fine, I can see myself logging into a box and typing 'chef-client' or 'puppet' by hand - but this is too much work to be done by hand. That's why we automate. I don't know why you have this idea that we simply want to make things harder just for job security.

[ryanpers]

I have run into sysadmins who prefer to be manual, and avoid automation.

I have a destination in mind, and I'm always looking for new travelers. But I havent seen many lately.