I’d never hire a developer who recommends that a roomful of temps keep a list of websites and send email to subscribers when they’re updated. In the same way, I’d never hire an admin who thinks its ok to by-hand work.
Admin’s, like programmers are paid for their intellectual output, however at at most companies it is treated as a throw-away. There is no insistence on system autobuilds, script repositories, deep monitoring taylored for custom applications, or even the ability to program!
The question of programming is so important that I give interviewees openings to talk about how they solved problems with a script or what language they like best or how they write command-line aliases for anything they have to do more than 3 times. I’ll also ask for code samples, or have them comment some code.
It’s critical that ops staff think about systems from a developers point of view. If I don’t get the strong feeling they love to automate away work they are not eligable for a Sr. Admin position.