What strikes me about the episode in terms of "general life lessons" isn't just "Listen to the engineers" (you should, though); it's that under the pressure to Get Stuff Done, there's a huge temptation to brush legitimate concerns under the rug. "These guys tell me this shuttle is unsafe, but space launch is never completely safe" --> "These guys tell me this user data isn't secure but no software is completely safe." Now that the newness of the space program has worn off a bit, it's easy to say "why didn't they just delay the launch?" but back in the day, it was an issue of national pride, and the managers, simple-minded as they may have been, were under an extreme amount of pressure to pull the launch off.
I guess it's just worth remembering that even if you're under pressure to ship, launch, or publish, if the guys whose job it is to know tell you to reconsider, you probably should.
I guess this is also a problem of different goals, according compensation and what you have to pay in case you were wrong... those guys having to push things through and make it happen in time, under budget get paid for just that - and not for having prevented a disaster. Just like bank managers make fat profits from taking on huge risks and then don't have to pay for it when it explodes in their face and nothing happens there; no person is responsible. It just happened.
(Another problem probably is communication between engineers and (project) managers - you can not be blatantly un-subtle enough... if the worst case is complete data loss then you paint them that picture in no subtle terms; if the worst case is catastrophic equipment failure, explosions, launching pad annihilated and several lives including the millions spent training them lost, then that's what you tell them and document in very direct terms.)
I guess it's just worth remembering that even if you're under pressure to ship, launch, or publish, if the guys whose job it is to know tell you to reconsider, you probably should.