Laziness - though of course when hiring you would bill it as efficiency or "expertise in software automation". A PhD taught me that often the best way to do thi

Laziness - though of course when hiring you would bill it as efficiency or "expertise in software automation". A PhD taught me that often the best way to do things is the way that lets you press one button and have everything else happen automatically. Mostly it's to make life easier, particularly when 2 months down the line you need to make a subtle code change and reprocess huge volumes of data. Being able to start a script and go to bed, rather than continually change the inputs, is a godsend. I think this is likely a side effect of the "smart but lazy" geek trope, except actually taking advantage of it rather than procrastinating.