My co-worker (and sysadmin-crush) Tom Limoncelli (@yesthattom) has been killing it lately with blog posts around automation and skills required for elevating systems administration and operations from just firefighting and keeping the lights on.
If you don’t subscribe to his blog, you should. Do it now.. I’ll wait.
A few of his recent posts (as well as some older ones) have been on my mind as well. I’m sure I’ll share my take in the near future, but for now read Tom’s posts and take them to heart.