* talk to your PI beforehand obviously, so you can see if they are a jerk
* keep an eye on the failure mode. Check if you are making real progress after a year or two. If not, mastering out in a STEM field a totally legit path that will still leave you with a perfectly decent career potential. Some places will even let you do a thesis with your masters if you for some reason love writing giant LaTeX documents.
progress can be extremely nonlinear - my year or two progress check would have yielded little, but ultimately I was in great shape when graduating my PhD program. Your advice isn't bad, but it's helpful to understand that the foundation can take a while to lay and then progress can accelerate rapidly towards the end.
This is definitely true. I've had some students who ramped up quickly in the first year or two, but some of my best students didn't ramp up until year 3 and had no output before then. It was very stressful for them, though, since students are prone to comparing themselves to the very best.
Yep - exactly. I'm not sure if there's any way to know if progress will accelerate or not. Personal research breakthroughs are likely a combination of preparation, luck, and environment. That can require patience, although I can say that at no time did it feel like my situation was hopeless or way off track. The conditions were appropriate for a breakthrough. If I hadn't seen the light at the end of the tunnel, I think that might have been a signal to switch tracks.
* talk to your PI beforehand obviously, so you can see if they are a jerk
* keep an eye on the failure mode. Check if you are making real progress after a year or two. If not, mastering out in a STEM field a totally legit path that will still leave you with a perfectly decent career potential. Some places will even let you do a thesis with your masters if you for some reason love writing giant LaTeX documents.