"but am I the only one that fears negative PR feedback about adding cruft?" Go for it, and you might be surprised as how your team responds. The biggest improv

"but am I the only one that fears negative PR feedback about adding cruft?" Go for it, and you might be surprised as how your team responds. The biggest improvements to our codebase have come from my colleagues making controversial changes. Sometimes they don't get merged, but sometimes they end up shaping how we write code going forward. You should never be scared of negative PR feedback -- your reviewers aren't judging you, they're judging your code, and code responds surprisingly well to criticism.