Got a new devops "manger" today we had an argument for 20 mins about why Staging/UAT was needed and why we could not just by pass it and get to prod quicker .. WHAT?! I am dumbfounded I do not have words to express the emotions I am having right now.

Sounds like our CTO and Head of Dev, but they try and go further by skipping QA too!

Depends on business context;

We don’t have any other env between Dev and Prod, but I spent a lot time with SysOps and support team wrote comprehensive end-to-end tests independent to dev team that build server bring up ephemeral environment (with everything) to probe every part of systems. It saves everyone’s time. Allows us to move faster with confidence.