I think the key is, how bad is it if a defect gets through? And what kinds of measures (unit tests, functional tests by QA, etc.) will best prevent it? If you

I think the key is, how bad is it if a defect gets through? And what kinds of measures (unit tests, functional tests by QA, etc.) will best prevent it? If you're making software that is fairly low-stakes, maybe it's not necessary to have any tests. If you can quickly see if there's a problem, and easily roll back, maybe tests are not necessary. If it's hard (or impossible) to really test the things that are most likely to break, maybe tests are just a placebo in that case and you shouldn't bother. But the OP's description of his job doesn't seem to fall into any of those cases. Quite the opposite, I'd guess.