It can even be a bit amusing, if they are insulting about it, to watch them vigorous call themselves stupid for expressing their previous opinions.

I don't base my opinions on whether or not I get to contradict someone else. Clearly some people do.

I really just want to be heard. I want to be heard and have a response from someone who has comprehended my point of view and fully engaged with it, but that rarely happens.

At my last job I was defiant because the company was storing plain text passwords and PPI in the test database, and every developer had access to it (I'm certain there is a reader of this comment whose password I had access to along with a good amount of PPI). I said this should be fixed but nobody really engaged with what I was saying; we had important product enhancements to work on. So I got defiant and pushed really hard and burned some of my political capital, made myself appear a trouble maker in some people's minds, and in the end the PPI was removed from the test database. This caused the test environment to break and some tests needed to be fixed. They still store plain text passwords though, because that assumption was spread throughout the code. I would have continued pushing to do the work and stop using plain text passwords, but I was laid off.

If a company prioritizes profit over ethics you will find trouble makers who are justifiably defiant. Judge for yourself how many companies do that.

How is that ”speak in their defense"? Can you think of an alternative approach that would have delivered the result over time without you loosing your job?

I'm happy for you. I have also had such workplaces, healthy and dynamic organizations. Are they in the majority, or somewhere in the middle in a normal distribution? Not sure, but my guess is not.

It’s a bizarre environment and I cannot believe how much time I’ve spent in it.

It's also necessary to be able to accept that others have other opinions and that to make progress everybody needs to be pulling in the same direction. A decision must be made and most of the time it's not going to be exactly what you're convinced is the perfect direction. Yet, having said your piece and perhaps having influenced the direction, it's necessary to then support the final decision even if you don't precisely agree with it.

A large proportion of people with the qualities you describe are unable to do this, and therefore tend not to be highly regarded by management.

Of course if you consistently find yourself at odds with the eventual direction then you're better off being elsewhere.

It’s nice for everyone else if they’re all contentedly pulling in the wrong direction, not so much for the one that sees that direction for what it is.

Of course, any given instance may be right or wrong, but the balance of probability has shifted.

It’s especially egregious when you have literal years of experience with a subject and some person without any of that makes, or gets people to make decisions their way instead.

You absolutely have people who are very competent but just not interested in what management (rightly or wrongly) thinks should be the current priorities. Sometimes things advance to the point where there's no longer a good fit. Not necessarily anyone's fault but it may be time to part ways.