This has truth but is not the full story. It gets your foot in the door, but I think junior researcher overinflate the importance of numbers. At the end of the

This has truth but is not the full story. It gets your foot in the door, but I think junior researcher overinflate the importance of numbers. At the end of the day when you interview, your future boss will ask about your research, and it doesn't matter all that much how many papers they are and how many are top published. Yes you should have some top conf papers, but one great Arxiv paper that is actually used by others can have more value than 4 meh papers that slipped through the reviews. Remember that nobody is a passive actor in the system. Everyone sees the state of conferences and review randomness and the gaming of the system. Senior researchers are area chairs and program chairs. They are well aware and won't take paper counts as the only signal. Again, papers are needed, but it's really not the only thing.