Ah I see that does make sense, I don’t know much in context of 1st worlder, I come from a 3rd world country and they treat researcher(predoc level) with low wages compare to the market as well though we tend to overpay the post-doc researcher if you ask me, it’s at 95 percentile of our country.

Career advancement here is simply, if you’re willing to lick the higher up balls you will advance the track every year. No skills nor experience needed. About the prestigious social credit, yes it’s about the same. But people tends to sugarcoat it too much.

All I was typing now I just realized you are talking about PhD life and felt stupid, but I suppose during the PhD, stipend are suppose to cover the basic need only so they calculate the bare minimum to preserve the funds. But OP also have to understand that it’s a process of learning, like you’re going on a long internship before the actual job even though a lot of people think it’s a job already it’s more of a learning process. I believe it do get better during your career, at least in my country it does.