I have seen versions of this often enough that I cringe when I see yet another junior doing it. A manager asks us to do something irritating. One of the engineers, often junior, rebels with some ranting, some joke, some slack message... He calls out the bullshit and everyone who saw it knows exactly what they think of the boss in question. However, they don't end up becoming the heroes, the rebels they thought. They get silence, they get careful deliberate, cold silence.
What was being displayed was not some bravery nor moral clarity. It was freedom from constraints everyone else in the room was still carrying. The colleagues have a mortgage, an immigration status tied to the employer, children in school, weak savings, or simply fewer credible exit options. They watched someone else demonstrate a risk tolerance they themselves could not afford. They are not happy, they just got reminded that someone else CAN do what they can't and they're jealous and somewhat resentful. Hell, not they, but us. I have felt that way often, specially after my first mort
The public callout makes a comparison whether the speaker intends it or not. One person shows that this issue matters enough to act on publicly. Everyone else becomes the comparison, the ones that are not brave enough. They either cared less, or cared just as much and could not afford the same gesture. Neither possibility feels flattering
This is not a defense of bad bosses. The criticism may be accurate and, honestly, earned. Some managers are extremely dumb and they should get called out, although probably not in a public rant. My point is that you should not expect recognition for your heroism. If you did, it was for you and for what you felt was right. What I'm warning is that you shouldn't expect your public confrontation to be taken as solidarity when it is really a personal moral act performed in front of co-workers who do not share the same margin for risk. Real workplace courage usually looks less cinematic than that. It looks like shared risk, documentation, repeated coordination, and people staying in the fight long enough to change the terms everyone else still has to live under.
There are exceptions. Sometimes a public act is what tells other people they are not alone, and sometimes that visibility helps a collective response form. But even in those cases, the confrontation matters because it creates leverage for something organized afterward, not because the clip itself was the victory.
The person most likely to confront, publicly is also often the one most able to leave soon after. Rant and leave. The colleagues who could not afford to act are still in the same roles, under the same management, with the same constraints, and the confrontation has often made the room slightly harder to live in: management gets more defensive, everyone knows someone was willing to rant about it and now it's time to keep the rest in check even more.
Yes, I saw yet another engineer explode yesterday on his manager. And likely I'll see another one in a couple of months. And yes, they're unpopular. Go figure.