eng77, I would also let them know that you have interest from other companies. This is all about recognising that they need you as much as you need them. From my days of recruiting technical people and also being a techy person myself I can tell you that really good candidates are very scarce and when you find one who is attracting interest from competitor companies you want to move fast and make solid salary offers.

sashank, here are my thoughts which are purely based on your post.
You forgot to interview your supervisor.
You should have asked him what he expected of you, how frequently he would want to meet up, what support he was going to provide and what he expected you to figure out yourself, what hours he wanted you working, who would write any papers resulting from your work, how long would he expect you to take to graduate and what would happen if you took longer, who would provide support when he wasnt there and a whole host of other questions.
Dont feel bad, its an inexperience thing.

Maybe you were too desperate to get a big name or a big uni on your CV to the point that you lost objectivity. People make these sorts of mistakes all the time.

Its promising that you are even asking the question.

What is your gut feeling telling you that you should do now to fix things?

eng77, I agree with you regarding the RA but I would probably find out from my supervisor what power he had allowed them to yield first. Personally, I would have had this ironed out during the interview and it would have been another of my red lines - I would only work directly for one supervisor and not a range of his minions. An RA talking to me like that would be told squarely to fuck off. The other problem the OP has is that they have joined a team. Again this isn't something I would ever agree to because it just becomes an invitation for others to control me. It's a difficult situation all round for the OP.

I certainly wouldn't advise you saying anything about losing motivation as a reason for poorer grades in 3rd year. I also wouldn't go with a defence of "if I had studied harder I would have got a 1st" because anyone can say it. If asked, you may need to satisfy the supervisor that your lack of motivation was a one-off due to exceptional circumstances which won't happen again. This is your biggest problem I think because during the middle years of your PhD you will have no shortage of things to feel demotivated about. How can you guarantee you won't suffer a similar fate? You need to be able to answer that question.

What was your undergraduate degree grade?

You might find that you struggle to get the PhD position you want with a 2:1 if you are in competition with those with a 1st but you will probably find something. If your 2:1 is very low I would seriously recommend you take a step back and consider whether your academic background is strong enough to make the journey without you fixing whatever needs fixing. It's hard enough without having the undergraduate principles secured.

By the way, if I can provide one piece of advice it would be to drop the "genius postdoc" thing. It's absolutely not true (there is no such thing as a genius) and it's potentially highly damaging to your confidence to be thinking that way. A PhD is no longer just about being academically brilliant. Yes you need to be smart but it's about hard work and an independent attitude more than anything else. It might be worth considering that this "genius" has not even secured their first permanent job yet and may yet find it hard to do so. Leave them to their own difficult life journey and just focus on yours.

I'm not sure I understand what has happened here.
Presumably you had plans in place at the start of the PhD to allow you to get through the entire process?
Did something change during the year to upset those plans?

Let us know how you get on.

I have to say that in my opinion, unless there are safety issues, it is not reasonable for a supervisor to be dictating what specific hours a fully grown adult student should be working in 2019. I asked questions about this during my interview and it was one of my red lines. I came and went as I pleased.

Not sure why you are talking to an RA. Those guys are not permanent employees are they? Either way, they are not responsible for your welfare and I would email your actual boss explaining your health concerns and also approach the university student services. You should consider reporting the threats you are receiving.

You are welcome.
I would also advise you that if you are worried about this, start researching into how to progress your career beyond the PhD as soon as possible. There's lots of things you can do to improve your chances of getting a permanent position such as organising conferences, doing outreach work with school kids, offering to help with the administration tasks within the department, marking class tests, tutorials etc. You cannot start this type of thing too early. Start talking to people who actually have permanent jobs for further advice and be wary of those who have not yet secured permanent employment (including myself by the way :-D because beyond this advice I can't help you further ).
You'll be surrounded by others who will talk incessantly about impact factors and league tables. Leave them to it. That would be my advice.

drwubs, I am not sure why you think I misunderstood what you were trying to say.

I have seen this type of situation so often that my advice in these cases almost writes itself.
My gut feeling from your original post was that you were presenting partly finished work and then asking for feedback. I then felt that you were poor at taking such feedback and that your response would be negative and defensive and that your supervisor would then behave the way they did. These were my thoughts on how this situation has occurred and that is precisely what I am seeing in your response (above) to my advice.
My advice then follows that analysis. I would now add that if you want to bounce ideas with your supervisor, you should not hand over partly complete paperwork for "review". Just chat about possible work.

I have no idea why you are talking about apportioning "blame". You are going to receive a lot of advice over the years. If you are going to be interpreting that advice through the prism of believing people are trying to "blame" you, you are going to have difficulty.

My advice stands as I described it in my first response. If you persist with your current approach you are going to cause yourself serious but entirely avoidable problems. As ever, you are perfectly within your rights to accept it or dismiss it. Good luck either way.

You need to be thinking about the quality of the research and the reputation of your group rather than wasting time on nonsense such as university rankings. After that, you need to be thinking about producing great papers and networking. Honestly, obsessing over rankings is a waste of time and energy unless you are talking about Cambridge or Oxford.

I have worked alongside people in permanent academic posts who went to ex- polytech unis and people from Russell Group unis who can't get out of post doc hell.

There is a lot of snobbery about these institutes but it's all bullshit and in my experience it's largely coming from students who went there. Please don't allow yourself to be distracted by this sort of thing.

I'm struggling to understand why they told you that you could not fail the theoretical part of your PhD. Having a demonstrable understanding of the theoretical work underpinning your research is absolutely crucial. You cannot and should not pass without having that.

Who told you that you "could not fail this part" and do you have that in writing?