I don't think that this is what he/she meant. If you ssh into the box, check some logs or something, find wrong configuration option and then roll out the new

I don't think that this is what he/she meant. If you ssh into the box, check some logs or something, find wrong configuration option and then roll out the new configuration in an automated way then that's all good. The problem comes when you change the configs manually over ssh and call it a day. A few fixes and a few months later, no one really knows how to set up some service because of those undocumented fixes (infrastructure automation serves as documentation). Now image that you have a dozen of services, some people quit, some people join, a year or two of manual fixes passes... And you have an awful mess where no one knows how to set up the services and just hope that you won't need to setup any new servers or migrate to different ones.