Fediverse

I agree, writing meaningless tests helps nobody and just creates extra work everyone. Unit tests should prove functionality and integration tests act as a vise. Much like you said, if a test breaks in that scenario, then you know something in another class has violated that contract. Good tests will have meaningful names and prove functionality, especially in the backend where it is especially important..

You mention (what I would consider) a bad practice of allowing merges without review. While that should be possible on personal projects with only one dev, strict review guidelines should exist so that nobody can just "push to prod". CICD is your friend - use it so that staging and prod never break. Again, I'm used to working on systems used by scores of millions of users so I appreciate forced automated validation. Nobody likes dumb breaks on a Friday before vacation.