I considered myself maybe a 60th percentile researcher, which I knew wouldn't be good enough. It's a good thing I opted out when I did. I know people who were as good or better than me who are keeping it together with a string of visiting positions, still hoping for that tenure track line to open up. I expect most of them will be giving up on academia in the next 2 or 3 years.
The point is that everyone who goes into any STEM subject at any level ought to know upfront that there are far more graduates than there are jobs in those fields of any sort including "researcher". It's no secret.
What a snarky and strangely dismissive comment!
Clearly there's a lot of overlap in the subject matter (it's science, after all), but employment prospects are most assuredly not the same for engineers and academics. You can get a job as an engineer; I cannot. As such, I don't see the relevance of your experience as an engineering student, hence my question.
So again, I'm not sure what your point is. I'm open to being wrong, but in order to see my error, I need to first understand your point.
It would be nice if you could explain it to me without being disrespectful.
Quite the opposite - both countries and departments/professors actively advertise the odds as much higher.