My good friend from high school has a PhD and was a published expert in a field that stopped being relevant when his company acquired another company and went with their tech.

He was laid off and unemployable in the field. He survived as a Starbucks manager and sold Herbalife for a year while getting some additional education. I was able to help him get a contract as a tech writer to get out of the retail stuff. Now he’s a director level person in a cybersecurity firm.

The one true path is obvious on message boards, but the reality is people find themselves in bad places sometimes.