Feeling trapped in doing IP Physical designs in EDA company. Unable to move to SOC.

I always wonder why the talk always moves towards brutality when we speak about reality. Because, the answer is, reality is brutal.

I started my career in 2021 in Physical Design Domain in IP architecture in one of the EDA company. Everything was going good, not gonna lie, I had learnings.

Then came 2023 and I had bad experience with respect to work and in the same time I thought of doing BITS PILANI WILP MTECH program but due to this bad experience I decided not to do, since that will force me to be in the same company. And immediately I started looking for job change. And this is 2025, its been more than 24 months and I am unable to change the company. And the question arises : Have I been trapped ?

Why am I unable to change the company ? :

-> IP PD work is not getting recognized anywhere. Interviewer is unable to understand that signoff requirement is different in IP designs. For example, my design doesn't have any congestion issues [literally]. So there are no congestion related challenges in PreC and in PostR [both routing congestion and placement congestion]. When the interviwer has asked about questions related to routing/congestion, I was able to answer only the surface level answers. I was unable to go into deep of those concepts. And I have been rejected multiple times because of that.

-> Same is the case with IR analysis as well. None of my design has IR complications. So I dont see lot of IR violations [none of the blocks my handles has this complication].

-> Our designs complications are with respect to meeting manual requirements, such as manual skews, manual routing and manual placements and BUMP placement and IOs placement as according to BUMPs. But none of the questions are asked. And even if the questions are asked, it can't be asked, because almost everything is design dependent.

-> My company pays me small chunk of RSU as well. When recruiters hear that I have been paid RSU, they immediately cut the connection.

So, I have a question here.

-> Have I been trapped here ? Situation has been created in such a way that I can never leave / find it hard to leave. I will forever be here. It is been more than 10+ interviews [and our industry has what, 15+ companies in India ?] and pattern is getting repeated.

-> RSU : Is this a trick ? You feed rat a lot, till it settles here. And once the rat has been successfully trapped, starve it. Let the hunger kill. And am I a rat here ?

-> How tf can I move from here ?