You're right, but the individual has to ask if entering a crowded niche is worth it or not. Does your main strength lie in absurd workload to grind out the paper a few months/weeks earlier to Arxiv than the next group will?
The risk reward calculus still often benefits this approach. The risk is that you get scooped. If you do something nonobvious, the risk is that it doesn't pan out or the reviewers don't get the point. The latter is harder to solve by grinding. So many phds will chose the former, as at least putting in ridiculous hours feels more actionable. Also, doing the straightforward thing and getting scooped is less ego-hurting than failing at your own special pet idea.
I think many who aren't in grad school don't understand how extremely important it is to have publications. At the beginning you must get publications to do internships and to build contacts at conferences. Then later it becomes imperative in order to graduate and get your next position. Nowadays you must even have multiple top conference papers just to start a PhD.
Of course from the point of view of the advisor with 15 PhD students, the ideal student would do high risk high reward work and if 3 projects become super successful, 5 become quite successful and 7 yield nothing, that's still great for the advisor. But the 7 who lost several years would rather not go through this.
The risk reward calculus still often benefits this approach. The risk is that you get scooped. If you do something nonobvious, the risk is that it doesn't pan out or the reviewers don't get the point. The latter is harder to solve by grinding. So many phds will chose the former, as at least putting in ridiculous hours feels more actionable. Also, doing the straightforward thing and getting scooped is less ego-hurting than failing at your own special pet idea.
I think many who aren't in grad school don't understand how extremely important it is to have publications. At the beginning you must get publications to do internships and to build contacts at conferences. Then later it becomes imperative in order to graduate and get your next position. Nowadays you must even have multiple top conference papers just to start a PhD. Of course from the point of view of the advisor with 15 PhD students, the ideal student would do high risk high reward work and if 3 projects become super successful, 5 become quite successful and 7 yield nothing, that's still great for the advisor. But the 7 who lost several years would rather not go through this.