[throwawayarnty]

Postdocs in Europe are pretty comfortable and labs often have more stable/core funding.

Work can be pretty good postdocing in some labs in Europe.

But the end of the road is still that after the postdoc you’re expected to either be a rockstar or a nobody. So anxiety is always there.

[Qem]

I think the core problem is lack of a intermediate default path, besides rockstar or nobody. In some places being a high school teacher was a reasonable, and even quite prestigious intermediate path. Some researchers even did significant contributions to science while in such roles, like Hermann Grassmann. But today being a teacher is a ugly duckling between professions that require higher education, overworked and with worse pay nearly everywhere. In some places they even have to worry about shootouts at work.