I would expect that good recommendations by known people in the field, collaborated by research productivity, would be excellent to get into graduate school. Maybe not to get a great job after graduate school, but you would have all of graduate school to get first author papers.

Arguably if you have a number of first author papers out of undergrad, you don't need graduate school.

Generally the most important thing is your letter's of recommendation, which should be good if the professors are putting you on the paper (so the paper is collaborative of that). A first author on an important paper is probably better, but if someone was a first author on an important paper but had lousy letters of recommendation it would be a red flag.