Any other captain could have thought of Riker has a yes-man if he followed orders without bringing up potential conflicts, it just so happens that wasn't Jellico's personality. Jellico flipped out before it was even known between the two of them. Then he disliked Riker from that point on, made a public spectacle of relieving him from duty.
Jellico also showed the utmost professionalism in going to get the best man for the job regardless of his personal feelings. I doubt Riker would've done the same.
Which he never would have had to waste time doing if he hadn't wasted time butting heads with his first officer over a personality conflict. Of course it's not his job to get them to like him. But great leaders go above and beyond just doing their jobs. Lead, instead of firing the staff and replacing it.
The teacher ran the classroom and instructed the students what work they had to do. If they didn't do it, or did it poorly, they failed.
All I can speak of is college. With the insane cost of college, I better be getting my moneys worth. Sometimes a professor that flunks an entire class is... not good, believe me. Some are nuts, some have extremely dated information. Can't just accept all authority with no feeling on it, and I'm not sure kids should be taught to do so 100% of the time either.
Sometimes authority is wrong. As is frequently the case on TNG when characters disobey/bend bad orders. Riker has done it, Picard has done it, Data has done it. How many times did we see characters ready to quit starfleet over some issue instead of just doing their job?
I don't believe Trek was in favor of just following orders to protect your job as it would be IRL. Characters who don't disobey at all would probably end up as the alternate Picard from Tapestry, never standing out.
If Kirk were in this episode, he would probably have taken control of the ship away from Jellico and used it to go after his friend.
And that would be called mutiny and would result in a lengthy prison sentence in some countries and the death penalty in others.
I'm not saying it's a good idea to obey authority 100% of the time, in fact it has been shown it can cause immense destruction (See Germany, Nazi).
Here's the thing you seem to be missing though, and I'm not trying to be a dick about this, William Riker is the first officer of the Enterprise, which means, by wearing that uniform, he is BOUND BY DUTY AND HONOR to follow the orders of the commanding officer. The only exception would be if he believed the CO was mentally unstable and/or was giving orders that were unnecessarily dangerous to the ship and crew.
Jellico at no time showed that he was mentally unstable or putting the ship in reckless danger for unnecessary reasons. Jellico was: abrasive, demanding, distant, usually made his own decisions without outside advice, and had high expectation of performance from his crew and didn't tolerate failure.
How many of these things are grounds for Riker to be insubordinate and difficult....ZERO. Riker simply was upset because Jellico wasn't Picard and he made Riker's job more difficult because the crew got pissed over Jellico's commands being an inconvenience to their lives and they all whined about it. Again NONE of this is grounds for Riker to act like he did about Jellico.
Even when Jellico refused to grant Picard that prisoner of war status or whatever protection, that was NO reason for Riker to explode and get into a shouting match. Jellico's main objective was not to make sure Jean-Luc Picard was kept nice and safe and returned alive, it was to stop the Cardassians fleet from invading whatever planet it was and if that meant Picard died as a result....well that's the risk they take. How many times did Picard give orders that resulted in the death of crew? Never saw Riker freak out over that. Wasn't one of the tests for new officers the ability to order people into situations where they would die for a greater cause?
Let's look at their discussion where they dropped the gloves and shared their feelings for each other. Jellico said he thought Riker was insubordinate and made deliberate decisions to challange his authority......both pretty damn good reasons for relieving him of his duties.
Here's what Riker said about Jellico
"Arrogant, and closed-minded."- Doesn't matter, not a valid reason to challenge him.
"You need to control everything and everyone."- Well by nature that's a captain's job, so he was more of a micromanager than Picard....Not a valid reason
"You don't provide an atmosphere of trust, and you don't inspire these people to go out of their way for you." - Uh didn't seem like anyone else had the issues you did. Sure they pissed and moaned about Jellico making things inconvenient for them, but noone seemed to think he was incompetent and they all did their jobs like he asked.
"You've got everybody wound up so tight, there's no joy in anything."- Guess what? The Enterprise was in a situation that could have lead to all out combat. It wasn't Jellico's job to make sure everyone was happy and relaxed. It was his job to make sure the ship and crew were as ready as possible for combat and if the crew didn't like that.....too damn bad, go get another job if you can't handle stressful and unpleasant situations.
"I don't think you're a particularly good captain."- Really? The guy who didn't back down at the table and who came up with the plan that forced the Cardassians to essentially run away with their tails between their legs AND managed to save Picard as well....Seems like a pretty damn good captain to me. Riker's definition of a good captain seems to be whether he's a meanie head or not.
Yeah ST has situations where obeying authority is justified, but this wasn't one of them. Other than being a kind of a jerk, making people work harder, and correctly understanding that Picard may have to die in order for the confrontation to be won, none of which justify insubordination from the first officer, Jellico did absolutely ZERO to question his abilities as a CO. It was Riker's job to adapt to Jellico as a CO not Jellico's job to adapt to Riker as XO. Riker didn't have to like him or the way he did things but, barring some serious reason to question his competence, none of which were ever shown, Riker was OBLIGATED to obey Jellico's commands and not bitch like one of the housewives of Beverly Hills in front of his face.
If Riker was either too stupid to figure this out, or too stubborn to change his ways, then he should have asked to be relieved of his duties as first officer. He didn't do that and he let his personal feelings get in the way of his job to the point where Jellico had every right to relieve him.
Jellico could have been an even bigger ass and had him court marshaled on insubordination charges, yet he chose not to do that.....So maybe Jellico wasn't the real ass in this whole thing after all.