Research Assistant same as Research Associate or Technical Associate. There is no career growth for this position. - Mitarbeiter (anonym) bei MIT: Mitarbeiterbewertung

The environment is different from lab to lab. It greatly depends on people in the lab that you interact with every day. It is academia after all and the whole system is archaic. Unfortunately researchers mostly care about publications. Research associates, PhD students, and post docs more or less do the same job but have slightly different responsibilities.