[smanzer]

Citations help you out in the long-time limit for sure; "worlds 7th most cited chemist" is definitely an improvement on "another dude with a bunch of Nature papers." But I would imagine that when you are going toward important early-career milestones (postdoc/assistant prof/tenure), they are mostly looking at your recent work, which will not have had time to accrue too many citations unless it is the absolute hottest thing. In those cases, journal ranking may be a bigger differentiator. I don't know how one would fix this.

[astazangasta]

Actually reading papers for content would be a start, and not just assuming that a first-author nature paper means you are a genius. Nature editors are human beings who use normal criteria for deciding whether a paper is good. They don't even have subject matter expertise all of the time. It makes no sense to trust the nature brand above your own judgment as a reader.

There is a larger problem at work, however, of university administration and departments using these sorts of signposts to decide who is worthy. I think both widespread managerialism in unis and a poor funding climate are both at fault.

[tmptmp]

Getting the almost parasitic "managers" off universities should be a top priority goal for the well-educated people. Managers should have no role in any funding, selection or other academic activities. The publishing related rent seeking is a result of poor management of university's academic affairs. The parasitic "managers" at universities, either knowingly or unknowingly, help the rent seeking "managers" at publishing businesses plunder money and thus pressurize academics to bow to the publishers. I know, this is very difficult to achieve but not impossible. Efforts like this (sci-hub) are steps in the right direction. Kudos to her.