I agree it is context dependent, but I was trying to show that it's not a binary choice between escalating or leaving. You can do both. If you lose the battle, at least you tried. I've left some jobs too early and regretted it. I could've done more and I should have done more. Probably, I would've failed anyway. Corporate politics and company culture is such a strong force.
The reality is many direct managers have little visibility into their reports day-to-day work because they are not hands-on enough. They should be checking the work product. Example: They should at least be looking at PRs and even participating in code reviews themselves. If you proposed this to some "engineering managers" I am familiar with, they would say this is not their job and you are crazy for even mentioning it. (I'd tell them I disagree about that, too.) This is why coworkers need to escalate performance problems: because many of the people making decisions do not know what is going on.
The reality is many direct managers have little visibility into their reports day-to-day work because they are not hands-on enough. They should be checking the work product. Example: They should at least be looking at PRs and even participating in code reviews themselves. If you proposed this to some "engineering managers" I am familiar with, they would say this is not their job and you are crazy for even mentioning it. (I'd tell them I disagree about that, too.) This is why coworkers need to escalate performance problems: because many of the people making decisions do not know what is going on.