As a developer, I think we all learn how this works in our first year of our first job.

We're attending a company presentation where a C-level executive discusses our project. They explain how we're going to ship this in the next eight months or so. We get confused because we know this will not happen, so we shoot them an email saying there is no way it will happen, and there must have been some miscommunication.

One of two things occurs:

1. The person we sent an email to ignores us or tells us that we are stupid and don't know what we're talking about.

2. The person we sent an email to believes us, talks to the chain of management, and we get punished by middle management for skipping them.

Either way, we learn not to do that again.