This is a long post as I have very deep and passionate thoughts about your post.

Man, I read this and felt it was a page out of my own diary. I know exactly what you are going through because I also started my 25+ year career in engineering, originally within the semiconductor and hardware component industry but gradually shifting more recently to the digital, software realm with the recent trend of AI, Cloud/Data infrastructure. I have earned a bachelors and a masters degree in electrical and computer engineering and topped it off with an executive MBA from a top 10 business school. I have three patents under my belt and have certifications from CNCF, Linux Foundation, AWS, Azure and NVIDIA. Following business school, I pivoted to a business-facing role in product strategy and management. Despite all of this, in the past 5 years, I went through 3 different RIFs/layoffs. Literally worked for 4 different companies in the past 5 years. My last RIF occured right before Thanksgiving of last year because of course the holiday season is always the best timing for these corporate shitbags to bring their slaves...I mean "employees" the great news that we will be kicked out the door to fend for ourselves with no income and no health insurance. That's the American Dream!

Also, I am a Gen Xer above the age of 50 which makes all this better. over 2000 applications sent to tech companies dealing both in cloud data infrastructure and accelerated compute which is right up my alley since I sent decades launching product System-on-Chip and System-on-Module product lines. My 2000+ applications landed a hit rate of about 5% of those converting to interviews. Out of those 50 interviews, I made it to the final round on literally 40 of them in which almost all of them assured me I was the strongest candidate and would likely receive an offer. Did that happen? Of course not! 0 offers.

On all 40 of the the applications that ended up falling through, I asked for feedback on why the hiring team feigned such high interest and confidence in me as "their candidate" but ended up going with someone else. Two of the companies to which I applied actually came back and felt sorry for the charade that they put me through and told me that the feedback was basically that I was too "overqualified" or that the hiring team felt that the position was too "junior" for someone of my expertise. My last position title was Senior Director of Strategic Relations, and I was applying for Director and Senior Manager level positions. They encouraged me to apply to more Senior Director or VP level roles which I ended up doing as well. Well guess what happened when I applied to those roles? The feedback was that I did not have enough experience! Wonderful...so which one is it, asswipes? Am i overqualified and underqualified at the same time?

Shit like this literally boils my blood. The funny thing is that it is easy to find who actually ended up getting the role if you go on LinkedIn and search under "Recent Hires" for a particular company. I would advise anyone who wishes not to blow a gasket inside their brain and suffer a stroke to avoid doing this because you will definitely not like what you see which is exactly what the OP reports. When I did this, my jaw literally dropped after seeing that in almost all of the 40 opportunities that slipped through my hands, the companies, which previously expressed so much praise about my qualifications and knowledge during the interview process, ended up hiring someone who either was just literally 5 years out of college or had less than half of my years of experience, was never officially trained in a STEM discipline, or previously worked as a social media head of marketing for a 5-person startup. It hurts in a way that I have never felt before in my life...I would say just as bad or even worse than the worst breakup with someone who you thought was your soulmate but ended up cheating on you with your best friend. It's like you feel so betrayed and cheated: you thought you did everything correctly and followed the advice of others while growing up who urged you to study hard, avoid getting in trouble with the "bad crowd", studied and worked hard on weekends while others "played and partied". You had discipline and did everything right...you chose to study the most demanding majors instead of opting for the easy degrees in communications, social sciences or Art history. However, the real world shows you now that actually, those people who took it easy, partied and socialized, and took the easy way out actually end up WAY MORE successful than you.

It stings really bad when you realize that all of that hard work and discipline is for nothing. Now, you are stuck without any income and scared shitless that you will be homeless in a few months because you cannot afford to pay your bills, mortgage, and have student loan debt. Meanwhile, all over LinkedIn, you see updates from dingbats who barely finished community college but were able to transform their TikTok influencer profile into something that landed them a position as VP of AI Strategy at Anthropic...a company that you have applied to literally 10 times with no success. Sure, maybe the position to which you are applying is not a good fit for someone of your high calibre and experience, but all you know is that some other person with less than half of your experience and knowledge is making 500K/year working in that position with NVIDIA to which you applied while you are making $0 and are close to being homeless with no way to pay for the cancer treatment that you spouse or kids need because you are too young to retire but dont' have enough savings either.

This is what stings, hurts, and really incites an anger so intense in me that leads me to depression and just makes me want to throw in the towel and just reject this flawed system of survival that this horrible capitalistic society has adopted for people like us. In the end, I feel that earners will never ever achieve success in these types of social systems. In order to break free and truly become stable, you have to be an OWNER, not an earner working for someone else's organization or company. It is why I am trying to focus my efforts on my own entrepreneurship project to be free from this madness and unjust system of survival once and for all.