I'm not sure if I agree with the automate 'everything' fanaticism. Some things just add to your technical debt as you are creating code that needs to be managed and updated. My last job I spent 90% of the time fixing the hundreds of legacy automation scripts dozens of dba's had created over the 20 or so years the systems had been operational (all using there own styles and preferred tools). Every time we patched an instance there were hundreds of scripts that needed testing to make sure they still worked!

Not saying automation is bad just that you have to be careful to not overdo it and to have a good clean out periodically where you review a scripts usefulness and if any in built sql tools would be better utilised instead of a roll your own solution. For example they had written a log shipping solution (as in built log shipping wasn't very good when they wanted it) so you could easily get rid of that for the in built log shipping.

Overall I agree that automation is king but due to my experiences I am choosy about what I automate and especially the tools I use.