In my experience in larger software companies, the hardest part of automation is convincing management that it's worth it to stop other development for long eno

In my experience in larger software companies, the hardest part of automation is convincing management that it's worth it to stop other development for long enough to automate a problem away. A lot of managers are fine throwing people at a problem if it means meeting a date and making the team look good while under the hood all the knobs are being turned by hands by an ever struggling staff. And then the worst case I've found myself in is where the people you hire specifically to automate are told to do things manually at first "until we get the automation out." Then you end up in a constant cycle of promising automation that will never exist because all of the workload is falling to the automators who have no time to fix anything.