I agree with several of your points explicitly. An FO in the 121 world is a REQUIRED CREWMEMBER, and should always be treated as such. I spent 18 of my 31 years in this business as an FO, so I get what you're saying. I'd like to hope the days of crusty old CAs saying "Just sit there and shut up, don't touch anything unless I tell you to," are long since passed. I was an FO in those days, and some guys were no fun to be around at all, much less to fly with.

I will add that "Don't do things the way they did it at your old company," could be said with some flex. We all collect our paycheck from Envoy Air, and should fly the airplane using the procedures the way they want. It's not our plane, it's theirs, and they pay us to do things a certain way. BUT, there are some techniques that guys like me who have spent 3 decades in this industry might have learned at other companies that are always valuable. For example: There is very little emphasis put on verifying the correct runway we've been cleared by ATC to cross, or line up on, or on looking outside the window to see if there is a plane on final. I'd hazard a guess that 90% of the FOs I'm flying, when we get a "Line up and wait" from tower, immediately go into their before takeoff flow without even looking outside to see if there is an airplane on short final for that runway. Not so long ago out of DCA we got that exact scenario...as soon as the tower cleared us into position, the FO read it back and picked up the checklist. I jumped on the radio and said, "We'll hold short." There was a plane at about 400' on short final. From my previous airline, we both had to verify verbally any runway we were given a clearance to cross the hold short line of, as well as "clear left," and "clear right" before crossing said hold line. Is that procedure here? No. Do I tell FOs they have to do it when the fly with me? No. Do I still do it myself every time? Absolutely. It's habit, and a technique that I'll never give up because I believe it's a good idea, and because everyone makes mistakes sometimes including tower controllers.

So don't discount the experience and techniques some of us still carry with us after we took an early retirement, or buyout, then decided to come back to work for a bit. As you said, nobody has to be a d!ck about any of it, and nobody should be treating anyone in the cockpit as anything other than a necessary part of the team to make things work well. There are a lot of guys in this industry who make the job a lot harder than it has to be.