This is me. I was in a leadership role at a large institution and made the mistake of joining a promising startup (great partners, good funding). In 2021, the company went down, and since then I have been rejected for everything. And by everything, I literally mean every possible way to get money in. I have only been scraping the leftovers at the bottom. Recently, I joined an outsourcing company to do digital transformation work (I have deep AI experience). It's shocking to see people getting hired with 0-1 interviews who then prove to be incompetent just because they are the right caste.