In general you seem like an absurd sort of creature. Neither here nor there. Bragging about your facility and business velocity. Everything you claim to do sysadmins were doing in 98 and with equal velocity and adequate coverage.

There were guys like this that were there before and helped everyone along: https://www.computerhope.com/people/don_libes.htm

At the risk of being too "meta", although I agree with what I believe is your point about good sysadmins having been advancing automation (and otherwise keeping business needs in mind), I worry that you're distracting a reader from that point by what reads as an ad-hominem attack in your first sentence.

I'm still not certain what point you were trying to make with "neithere here nor there", however.