I endorse this idea. You can lead by example and make things better for yourself and all those that work with you. The downside is that your boss may actively

I endorse this idea. You can lead by example and make things better for yourself and all those that work with you. The downside is that your boss may actively discourage you from documenting. You may get in trouble if you take any time documenting when you could be, say, coding. I find that this is only a problem when you make it explicit that you're doing one thing instead of the other. So don't say "I'll spend some time documenting this". The same thing goes for refactoring. Don't say "I'm going to spend some time refactoring". These items count as the nitty-gritty of software development. Your boss doesn't need to know the details. You just do it because it's the right way to do things. Same goes for unit testing, if it makes sense for your work.