[Ultimatt]

The OP is bringing up a very specific form of PhD here. That of the "big lab", these are inherently exploitative. You are training for yesterdays skills on something no one cares about (most of the time). Then you finish, there is no career from there unless you were exceedingly good at rising above and building a network and upskilling independent of the crappy structure around you.

Consider if you had the very best of human beings as your supervisor, who has 30 students. If they did absolutely nothing but give an hour a week to each student they wouldn't even have time for a shit break in a normal working week. So you are quite literally not even vaguely on the priority list for that person, unless you are exceptionally brilliant and going to help bring in some $$$ to the group and hang around. Then this prof sits in this environment with a power structure to match the reality, taking essentially blind credit for others work for decades. It breeds a specific thought pattern in the prof and group that corrupts. So in this sense, no industry is not the same. Unless you go into an industry with the exact same dynamic.

I worked in a theoretical group with only about four or five other students with at least one or two postdocs. The dynamic was excellent, prof had an open door and would have the time. At that point the prof really is contributing intellectually, and also knows to what extent they have contributed to the work. So their belief in their own contribution as a leader is grounded in reality, typically they will also constantly see the student outgrow their own understanding by the end of the PhD every single time. That is a healthy environment for the profs development as well as the students.

Ultimately in a big group you are prof level resource limited, and this includes career important things like networks of good contacts and collaborators. How does a prof prioritize 30 students working on the choice projects, learning the new methods from the best postdocs, and working with the best collaborators? The biggest strongest chick at the start constantly gets the food. Doesn't matter that its then an increasing returns effect, and if you just gave the same level of opportunity to the others in the group everyone would be just as strong. The lab needs flux of workers not new leaders at bigger scale. The equivalent in industry would be a startup where everyone is trying to be CEO. That might work with like four or five people who know each other well and are equally competent and take it in turns but not going to fly in any other scale.