Having been in the same situation as you, you have to bring some technical leadership if you want to change things. And some empathy, these people are stuck in

Having been in the same situation as you, you have to bring some technical leadership if you want to change things. And some empathy, these people are stuck in a local maximum, they try their best probably with limited tools and knowledge. Conda is a shitshow for sure: teach them how things could be better. Notebooks are a reproducibility nightmare: show them how nice eg. Pycharm is People are unqualified to write O(n) code in less than O(n^3) time: identify skill gaps and get their management to sign off on some software development / python training. If you can make a convincing case why your approach is better, you can make everyone's life better.