Who’s sped up by your automated tests are your team members and you-in-three-months.
Definitely true. I am very thankful when I fail a test and know I broke something and need to clean up after myself. Also very nice as insurance against our more “chaotic” developer(s).
I’ve advocated for tests as a team effort. Problem is just that we don’t really have any technical leadership, just a hands-off EM and hands-off CTO. Best I get from them is “Yes, you should test your code.” …Doesn’t really help when some developers just aren’t interested in testing. I am warming another developer on my team up to testing, so at least I may get another developer or two on the testing kick for a bit.
And as for management rating me… I don’t really worry too much. As I mentioned, hands off management. Heck, we didn’t even get performance reviews last year.
If your school has Hackathons, try to do those, ideally with friends. The atmosphere is honestly a bit horrible in my opinion and you may get instant imposter syndrome, but it gives you a project to talk about.