I’ve been pondering how to respond to this, because it’s difficult. Apologis it’s take so long, and thanks for taking the time to read & comment.

I never had ‘the talk’ you describe, but then, there’s no such thing as tenure-track in Australia. Certainly there were few warnings from supervisors, but then here academic staff are incentivised to take on PhD students. Because universities are still mainly publicly funded, there is a $50-$80k payment made to departmerts through the Research Training Scheme upon submisison (not award) that universities are desperate to get their hands on. ‘The system’ doesn’t incentivise ‘good behaviour’ from supervisors in this case (which doesn’t mean some of the good ones don’t put the effort in to warn students — I know quite a few who do).

That being said, the writing was on the wall, and had I had eyes to see it I could have. Hence the ‘those poor bastards’ joke.