3 ms·
What exactly is meant by "cowboy" here?
by omarfarooq 5y ago
What exactly is meant by "cowboy" here?
- nicd 5y agoSomeone 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).
- strikelaserclaw 5y agooof, 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.
- orzig 5y agoNot 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-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.