sanketskasar

I am working with an enterprise SaaS startup that is about a year old. They have the product validated, conducted some pilots and are now into the revenue and growth phase. The founders don't have enough knowledge/experience about software development. Initial they hired developers who could create a working system but without any systematic organisation and practises like testing or code reviews. I joined a few months back and seen the code-base get uglier day by day and all I have done till now is ask people about technical documentation for every feature/fix they code, writing tests and following proper branch structure in git so as to merge the code with a peer review. But nothing such has been happening and I am afraid, we will reach a stage where making changes to existing code will ensue lot of side effects. It is my responsibility now to make sure these processes are setup and followed by all the devs. Given that its a small team of 7-8 devs, it should be easy to enforce these practises but that hasn't been the case. How do I go about it? How do I make sure that business execs don't pressurise the tech people enough to cut corners and flung the process? As a not so experienced developer, what are other things I should focus on? And is it possible to implement this without taking a hit to productivity?

I have been working as a web developer for over a couple of years now. One thing I always end up feeling is that whatever task/story I am working on could have been done much faster and probably with a better solution. I attribute this to not having expert knowledge of the underlying tech(say Mysql or Python/Django). And to that end, I do try read and practise a lot. I end up with a similar feeling no matter what.

Is there some other angle to this? Are there some things I am missing? How do I get more productive in terms of speed and quality of my work?

I consider myself an average to good web developer with a couple of year's experience behind me in variety of languages/frameworks. I am in process to find an unconventional route to working(geared towards becoming a digital nomad to certain extent). I have come across some opportunities but do not feel confident to apply for those positions despite them being similar to my current work profile. How do I get my knowledge and confidence to a level that I can easily get such a position? More importantly, how do I find such opportunities that also pay well and have reasonable amount of freedom?