what is the most stubborn, ego-driven management decision you've had to deal with? did anyone ever figure out how to change their mind?

The boss in my place brought in some guy as head of marketing who he picked himself and thinks is the bee's knees. We have a closed customer base who, once they purchase our products, will buy spares for the next 30 to 40 years. We don't really need marketing at all.

He does nice graphs and charts (that we don't need), chats in constant gibberish business-speak, and makes things look fancy. That's it.

He has recently been moved into an overarching position in control of technical and engineering teams he knows nothing about and can't manage properly, and the shit will hit the fan real soon.

I can't wait.

Only time I've ever been written up in my career, I told the CEO -- very politely -- that "cybersecurity is the boards responsibility, whether they want it to be or not." He did not like hearing that.

If there's a problem, they can count on me to tell them about it. Always in writing. If they don't want to act, that's on them.

We had an IT director for a few years who decided we were spending too much time defining requirements, testing, and writing things down because "There is always something that has to be fixed in Production". He could not acknowledge that doing things right resulted in far fewer problems in Production or that it saved time in the long run. Instead he praised the people who spent most of their time pushing out shit code and fixing it constsntly because it was more noticeable than something that went out and just worked.

There was no solution, had to wait for him to leave.

I was not notified about a pentest(Penetration test, where your company pays white hat hackers to try and breach it's security and write a report on it), and as the only person in charge of that site during my shift, when I saw the alarms go off I tried to reach out to all my superiors multiple times, reached out to the "on call" and got no answer from either. I ended up pushing the big red button, on their words I caused the company to lose a fuckton of money.

I refused to be the scapegoat or sign the written warning, going as far as threatening legal action so they backed off. Ultimately ended up quitting because of the harassment bringing my already shaky mental health to a point where I was a danger to myself.

No fairytale ending, I think they burned me on the cybersecurity circles and I ended up overeducated and unemployable, and my sad little heart didn't and still doesn't have the fortitude to fight back. Plus, it's been over a decade, all I knew is outdated and my certs lapsed ages ago. It is not a fight I could put myself through.

repaint all the forklifts solely so she could berate us every time a new scuff appeared

Bosses swinger flinger wanted me to sign a write up for changing clothes before end of shift. It was actually a write up because I made safety complaints about the mold growing in our changing room walls. Extra funny because her position at the company (when not riding the owner) was technically safety officer, so calling out obvious safety issues made her and the boss look bad.

Called in my union rep who explained donning and doffing time (especially in industries requiring PPE) and how time to change was legally required. Owner just couldn't accept being wrong and changed it to a write up for insubordination because I didnt do what I was told and the rep told me to just sign it, so I did. Later, I was fired for "insubordination" in making another safety complaint to the safety officer (about the safety officer) calling out a lack of PPE in an active work zone. She responded by threatening me in front of witnesses and the company is now stuck in arbitration with my union about it. Very fun but also incredibly boring

"If you leave now you'll be fired." -so many dead bosses in the WTC.