Talking Automation: Misconceptions on Automation

0:00 [Music]

0:14 when you look at it from your point of

0:17 view you know as the network engineer um

0:21 you know when company management comes

0:23 to you dreaming about automation and all

0:24 these great things it's going to do

0:26 you know what are

0:28 some of the misconceptions that that

0:31 they often have with that and you know

0:33 kind of what's your reality is coming

0:35 from a

0:36 engineering perspective it always feels

0:38 like there's a disconnect between

0:41 what leadership

0:43 wants to do and says is possible and

0:45 what's quote-unquote easy and then what

0:48 the net ops folks have to do

0:50 um you know we i i've always joked on

0:53 any kind of calls i'm on with the

0:54 project like when

0:56 anytime anybody says something's easy or

0:58 oh well all you got to do

1:00 you know that's a red flag for me it

1:02 means they don't know

1:04 the intricacy and the difficulty of you

1:06 know what they're asking um

1:09 you know i've had i've had conversations

1:11 with leadership at different orgs you're

1:13 like well just you know it's almost like

1:14 they think well just press the

1:15 automation button man like that's all

1:16 you got to do like you know

1:18 gartner or somebody said we all have to

1:20 automate so we're all going to automate

1:21 so just do it right and

1:23 um

1:25 i think the the biggest misconception is

1:27 just the level of difficulty for the

1:29 network operator to learn all the

1:31 automation tools you know we could talk

1:32 for 20 minutes about ansible and how

1:34 great it is but also

1:36 all the different things you have to

1:38 learn to stand it up get it working know

1:40 a config file from a yaml file and then

1:43 there's syntax and spacing it like

1:45 this whole automation coding world

1:48 um for a guy like me who wasn't a

1:50 computer science major i didn't take

1:52 four or five you know programming

1:54 languages in college and i would say

1:56 there's a lot i speak to a lot of people

1:58 in the community in the network

1:59 engineering community and it might be a

2:01 split maybe 50 50 maybe half of us are

2:04 computer science folks and it's not a

2:06 big deal like sure i know python sure

2:08 ansible's a breeze but there's a ton of

2:11 folks like myself who didn't go to a

2:14 computer science you know college major

2:16 thing

2:17 and when you say things like well all

2:19 you got to do is learn ansible and

2:21 python and data structures and chef and

2:23 puppeteer whoa whoa whoa

2:25 hold on

2:26 and

2:28 time

2:29 right is is the hardest thing to come by

2:31 you know you have a job like we talked

2:33 about you have a lot of things to do day

2:34 to day and

2:37 now you have to learn all this stuff

2:39 that comes with automation there's not

2:41 one magic button right now there are

2:43 some solutions that we might get into

2:44 that do really seem to extract a lot of

2:47 that

2:48 automation pane stuff away

2:51 and and give you a much more accessible

2:53 easier interface

2:54 but

2:56 my challenge was

2:58 when am i supposed to learn

3:00 all of this coding

3:02 uh automation stuff because it is a

3:04 technical skill set

3:06 and

3:07 i was never afforded time during my work

3:10 days to do that so much most things in

3:13 tech nights weekends you know

3:15 um sacrificing time with my you know

3:18 kids and family so that i can work on

3:21 you know learning python at night right

3:23 um that's

3:24 that's probably the biggest

3:25 misconception two of them a it's easy

3:28 and b

3:29 you don't need much time to do it just

3:30 go just just go automate you know um

3:34 yeah you kind of triggered me

3:37 that's that's okay because that's the

3:39 reality of it right i mean you're

3:41 speaking to it from a reality

3:42 perspective

3:43 [Music]

3:50 you