Not OP but in tech cowboy often means "taking unacceptable risks to increase velocity". In this case, shipping code without integration tests in Staging. whether that risk was 'unacceptable' is the difference of opinion at issue.

Fun fact: The 2011 article Cowboys and Pit Crews (https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/cowboys-and-pit-cre...) points out that modern cowboys actually spend a lot of time on communication and checklists.

Someone who plays it "fast and loose" in terms of engineering (for example, deploying straight to prod). As parent mentions- this isn't necessarily a bad thing depending on the context (but "cowboy" here has a negative connotation).

oof, i described myself as a cowboy at a interview i did last year to a higher up, no wonder i didn't get the job even though i did well on their technical exams. I always took cowboy coder to mean someone who had independence and resilience to get things done even if the environment isn't conducive towards that.