At a Small Developer that owes subs for past deals - bad sign or somewhat normal?

Do they act as their own GC? I’ve seen late payments like this before - it happens, some invoices just fall through the cracks. Did your boss tell you specifically don’t pay these out? Ask for the reasoning. We’ve held payments back because we’ve either 1) already paid the GC who was supposed to pay the subs, 2) dispute the payment, or 3) awaiting funding to come through so we don’t need to pay anything out of equity unnecessarily. For 3) we’d push as long as reasonably possible if there was actual expectation of alternative funding sources coming soon

Sounds sketchy. If they don't get paid, they could put liens on the properties that they worked on. That would show up in a title search and make it hard to sell or refi the property.

Don’t worry about it. Not your problem. The GC of the job is who should be paying them. While yes. It rolls up to the developer. The GC could be withholding payment for specific reasons. You probably don’t have the facts. However, the subs could be getting screwed too - we don’t have all the facts. 

Happens quite a bit. You'll pay the GC and then they screw over the subs. I have had countless scenarios where subs would threaten to sue us and we just put our hands in the air and say not our problem. The reality is the subs are just trying to get paid for work. Typically a lien from a sub might not get processed in court as there would be no agreement between the sub and us. Sometimes its just better to use a GC and let them deal with this. Once had a sub who was doing flooring that actually cried to me that he didnt get paid and he was just trying to take care of his family. I felt really bad, but had to show him a copy of the check I paid to the GC. I walked him through the process of taking the GC to court.