Many of the items you've listed here are more cultural than technical. Confidently saying "we're going to use this because I'm senior and I know it's the right

Many of the items you've listed here are more cultural than technical. Confidently saying "we're going to use this because I'm senior and I know it's the right choice" is something that I see as rarely being successful. It has its time and place, but it ain't something that you should be doing often. You mention bringing the right coworkers into the decision-making process, which is the more appropriate move. Now, of the items you mention not having an answer to, I can give you a definitive answer to a few: ;) - Do you need CI? Yes if it's helping you manage your risk. Do you need it for your 4 line bash script? Probably not. For an application your team works on regularly? It's 2016; Set up a freakin' CI server. - Absolute security? This doesn't exist. Manage your risk, and the risk to the business. See: http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/mickens/files/thisworldofours.pdf http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/mickens/files/thisworldofou... - Tests? Yes. As far as coverage and what type, again, manage your risk. Does decent unit-level coverage and a couple of end-to-end tests give your team the confidence they need to develop quality software at a rate acceptable to your team and the business? - Do we need code reviews? Dealer's choice, but manage your risk. If you're getting heavy on tech debt, or there are big holes in team understanding, and you notice work is slowing down as a result, you haven't been managing your risk. - Most appropriate database? Manage your risk. Have the conversations with the business that give you a framework for doing a meaningful evaluation. - Shaving millis off of load times? What value does this represent to the business? There's a cost/benefit analysis that needs to be done to determine whether two weeks of work improving the response time by 10ms produces noticeable business value. Perhaps there's a way to shave 8ms off the response time which will only take one day. How much are 2ms worth to the business? -- It's nice to have personal experience answering questions like the ones you bring up, but I would only say "nice to have". As the previous poster mentioned, senior is IMO about being communicative and thoughtful more than it is about being right all the time or having a lot of battle scars to show off.