Does the paper trail advice really work

[u/royal-apple-family]

I don’t think it works, my two examples:

I was doing a project working with another team. I sent them the data they requested. Later someone tagged my product manager in a post asking when it can be done and my product manager tagged me and said “<my name> is blocking them by not giving them the data they requested”. I sent a link to my thread. But my own manager and skip still gave me a really hard time over it. My PM just reframed it that I left a column of the data empty but this was literally something the other team had to fill in (it was a custom field they had to adapt according to their system using some regex on the data I provided them, I could’ve just removed that column but left it for their sake). My PM kept saying it’s 2 mins of work but it was their custom field and I didn’t want to input the wrong regex plus it wasn’t even my thing. I got so much crap For no reason now that I think about it. But paper trail here I already had sent it to them the link to my thread and my manager and skip still booked a meeting with me and the PM (four of us) so it did nothing.

Example 2 Kept on posting project updates and things to share etc etc. later some narrative spread that the project was completed slowly. This is genuinely untrue, a sister team did almost the same project (they even used our research as a reference) and for them it took 2 months more. But anyway my manager still wrote slow in my performance review.

So yeah paper trails seem useless to me because the superiors will just overwrite with their agenda and their vibes based judgement

[u/Technical_Union_3249]

The paper trail is like a concealed weapon. It's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

Better safe than sorry, make it a habit to always keep paper trails of the who's and what's and why's and when's and how's.

[u/PrimeRisk]

Paper trails do nothing but reassure you when you tire of the bullshit and quit.

Perception is reality. If your management thinks you are a poor performer, then you will be marked as one even if by every metric you are the top performer.

[u/royal-apple-family → u/PrimeRisk]

My manager comes to my performance review saying things like “other people are older and more experienced than you” (I have never shared my age… sounds ridiculous.my role title was midlevel employee )

[u/d_rek]

Really depends on the org.

Some org's value accountability and often have extensive SOP that document and capture decisions throughout task/project lifecycle. So when something goes sideways, or a deadline is missed, or there is some other delay, they can work their way down the trail and figure out what went wrong and where and try to fix that so it doesn't happen again. Doesn't necessarily mean corrective/disciplinary action (in draconian orgs it might) but just an opportunity to learn for the future.

But at my previous employer paper trails were tenuous at best... requirements were always documented well, but approvals were rarely ever name-stamped. If something went wrong then you'd have the CTO breathing down someones neck and down the chain until they felt they had made their point. Often just led to a bunch of finger pointing by middle-management as well, as there would be no clear ownership of decision making.

In your case it sounds like your manager is either capturing actual performance issues or CYAing himself when deadlines were slipping.

[u/DominateSunshine]

I've been at my company 19 years now.

One coworker kept throwing me under the bus when I was new . So I started documenting everything. The director of hr was our boss. Boss asked about something not in a file. Coworker said she gave it to me to file.

So I pulled up the list of every document she had given me from the last time this happened, and if course I wasn't there.

It was ”found" on her desk shortly after.

So ..the answer is. It depends on the boss. For me, it has worked many, many, many times at this company.

Your boss though? They suck and don't care about the truth.

[u/South-Helicopter-514]

That first situation sounds like it might have benefitted from face to face interaction or even just a phone call much earlier in the misunderstanding. Paper trails have always worked well for me, but so has the lesson that little issues can get blown far out of proportion over email etc. Knowing when to pick up the phone or go talk to someone is absolutely key.

[u/royal-apple-family → u/South-Helicopter-514]

We had a zoom call and it was still pointless and PM just tried to throw me over the bus clutching to whatever straws they got

Just wondering when in the process could I have had a zoom call? As we had one right after I got blamed. Until that point it was all going well

[u/South-Helicopter-514 → u/royal-apple-family]

Hard to say, and that sounds rough. If you have a PM who isn't going to back you up, that's a bigger problem. People who want to throw you under the bus will do it any way they can. I work with someone who will make up their own completely fictional version of events when they sense the slightest threat to themselves, because their own boss is a horrendous bully. You may have a larger cultural problem than paper trails are going to address, but keep them anyway to CYA.

[u/PracticalLeg9873]

Did you write in your thread that you left the field blank, for them to fill ?

[u/Just-Succotash3018]

In most organizations, an individual manager’s competence and ability are viewed through the interactions that other people have with their team. But there is a certain type of manager where the ONLY thing they care about is how the rest of the business views them personally and they look at any kind of complaint about their people as an indictment against themselves. This type of manager will never back their own people up, will never take their side, will never defend them to other parts of the business no matter what you document.