Hey everyone, I’d really appreciate your take on a situation I’m going through at work.

I’m a software engineer at a small-to-medium company. A few weeks ago, salaries were delayed by over three weeks, and we hadn’t received any kind of communication or update from management.

People were understandably nervous — especially since some technical staff had been recently laid off. The atmosphere was tense, with many colleagues quietly applying to other jobs.

So, I decided to send a respectful email to upper management asking for clarification — nothing confrontational, just requesting transparency. I signed the email myself but wrote it “on behalf of the employees who hadn’t received any information.” I CC’d the entire technical team — everyone who explicitly agreed to be included. I even asked the managers first if it was okay to include more people in the loop, but they said no — they claimed “they had already been informed” and didn’t think it was necessary.

I sent it anyway, because it just felt wrong to stay silent. People were genuinely worried. We’re talking about people’s salaries, after all.

Management did reply (the next day), but then the CEO scheduled a 1:1 with me. He told me he understood the request, but was "disappointed by the format," saying the email felt like a "class action." He seemed upset that I didn’t raise the issue privately or individually.

To be honest, I now feel like I’m being subtly positioned as a “divider” between management and employees, when the divide was already there — I just exposed it. I didn’t do this to make noise; I did it because I thought someone had to ask the obvious question, and others weren’t being heard.

My question to you all is: Was I out of line for sending that email? Should I have just accepted management’s silence like the other managers did?

Is this kind of reaction from leadership... normal?

I’m genuinely curious to know if this is just a bad moment at one company, or something more systemic in tech. Thanks for reading.