Among the general public? Definitely.

Social and networking skills also matter within your professional community but they are not a substitute for publishing in top journals/conferences.

Perhaps your experience is different. Having the right name as the first or last author helps a lot in peer review and publication. Even in “double blind” reviews, it’s easy to find the authors usually.

Sort of true, but not quite. You may infer that a paper is from a certain lab or that the first author may be someone specific as it builds on their work... But last author? Not as easy as supervisors/lab leads can change.

Its not the supervisors who become famous. Its the lead Professor of the lab. Usually in engineering papers/journals the first/last author is the lead professor of the lab, who does nothing more than get the funding for the project.