[enominezerum]

The option to escalate can severely get compromised if you give your superior the opportunity to approach their superior first.

Not only have you given your boss a chance to compromise your position but you won't have the rapport with their boss that they do. You are just a complaint and until there is a trend of these complaints they most likely will be handwaved away.

Maybe you haven't been through the circlejerk enough but the politics of a place totally shoot down your argument.

Oh, you know throwaway0a5e, they are a troublemaker. I have been trying to deal with some of their performance issues off the book to keep their record clean but you know don't like that and are now calling me out for whatever. You trust me, right boss?

[Sebb767]

If that boss is of the opinion that you unnecessarily escalated the situation, you can easily get the troublemaker label completely on your own, plus get some bad faith from the accused party if said boss talks to them.

In my opinion, this depends a lot on the severity of the issue anyway. If we're talking about workload assignment or some comments, talking directly will be the best solution. If the issue is serious (sexual harassment, academic fraud etc), directly escalating is warranted.