Yes and no. I think the best kind of rejection is the kind that convinces the rejectee that the rejection is well and proper, certainly. But at the end of the day I want to see some measure of humility in a junior engineer. Blind trust is a bit much, to be sure, but the junior should have some grasp on the idea that they don't know everything, can't know everything, may not have all the context (context which they do not always need to do their job), and they should just accept it and move on. Some battles are worth fighting, but many are not.

Put another way: a company is not a democracy. Consensus is nice, but if we had to build consensus around literally everything we did, we'd get a lot less done. Sometimes it's absolutely fine and proper to say "we're not doing that right now, and I don't have the time to get into the nuts and bolts of why".

> (edit: what I'm saying is - prove your explanation and convince the person of the business priorities, you can't say "it's confidential" or "we can't talk about why" or "the decision was made above our head".)

Agreed, those are crappy, insulting, disrespectful explanations.