"The CEO is the only one who will change it, and clearly doesn't have interest in that, so give up or move on" feels at first like a bleak and defeatist answer.

"The CEO is the only one who will change it, and clearly doesn't have interest in that, so give up or move on" feels at first like a bleak and defeatist answer. I have found that it is entirely true. A company I worked at before went through this. We spoke to one of our more seasoned investors, who had the same thing as the parent comment to say. I spent a lot of time trying to find ways for this not to be true, but it is. At a company, the CEO owns the culture. Even if they don't know they do. There are a lot of variables you can change, but that one's a constant.