Here’s a bit of good news for those of you scared of network automation replacing your jobs: even Elon Musk didn’t manage to pull it off, so I don’t think a networking vendor dabbling in intent will manage to do it (particularly considering the track record of networking vendors’ network management and orchestration systems).

There’s something more interesting in that article: an overview of how Tesla had to retrain their workers and refocus them on higher-value jobs. Likewise, if you’re configuring VLANs today, you might be asked to automate their configuration in the future, so you better start learning how to do that.

There are tons of ways you can learn about network automation tools for free – from vendor documentation, blog posts, sample playbooks others have posted on GitHub/GitLab, even Networking Field Day videos…

You can also invest a bit more and buy a few books, watch tutorials and deep-dive videos, or go all in and enroll into a comprehensive interactive training program full of hands-on exercises.