I academia, if you're a PhD student that writes the paper, you're the "first author", but anyone who helps you do research or process data or other contribution

I academia, if you're a PhD student that writes the paper, you're the "first author", but anyone who helps you do research or process data or other contributions is a "second author". I think that's a better system, because one person may have 2 first author publications and 3 second author publications. Another person may have just 1 first author publication but 12 second author publications. So you can weigh and evaluate each person based on their assistance and contributions to others.