Push for open source technologies. Because these tools are so well tested and very flexible they can help u do stuff that would otherwise take 10 times as long. If something can be done with python then don't use C++ just because everyone else does. It takes a little bit of courage to do this but you'll be going home at 5pm while others are slaving away trying to link their executables. The better your tools, the eas…
We already use a lot of open source tools (I got pretty good at Python at my current job). We're not as open to using new technologies as I'd like though (there's a review process for each new thing). Unfortunately, for each open source thing we use, management tends to think that they can now cut our deadlines in half since we said it would "save time" :)