[feral]

I wasn't advocating being naive about conflicts of interest.

But the solution to a conflict of interest is not to internalize your advisor's point of view!

So don't think of them as your manager, in some traditional sense.

Think of them as your mentor, not your boss. Most of the time it's hard for them to fire you. Think long term, don't be tricked into optimizing their need for a stream of low quality papers to inflate their indices, or whatever pathology they may be pursuing.

I had a great advisor who didn't do any of this. But if my advisor was just trying to exploit me, and I had no way to effectively ignore it, it would substantially decrease the value of doing a phd, to the point where I'm not sure id recommend it in terms of expected value.

>What are they paying you for, then?

They aren't paying you. It's whatever body awarded the Grant's money. And they probably didn't set out to increase your advisors hindex.