> i'm never going back to academia; rent seeking vampires.
That they are. Maybe not rent-seeking, but they definitely hustle hard to build a very wide pyramid and take full advantage.
> my advisor discouraged me from looking for internships over the summer. kicked me to the curb
Ouch. The academy is f*ed up like that, and while I'm not surprised by your story, you certainly have my sympathy.
> my phd involved a lot of coding, hpc work, and 'data science', i don't understand why i can't get past recruiters
I think you probably mean HR, but if there's a single party in the hiring process most likely to impose dumb filters, you're right, that's them. You've likely heard everything I'm about to say, but overcommunication is cheap, while undercommunication is expensive, so I'll say it anyway.
The trick, of course, is figuring out which filters you're getting caught in. For academics looking to transition to industry, the usual problem is focusing on academic achievements too much, rather than focusing on programming skills too little. Trying to convince industry to positively value your prestigious publications is a hopeless task at the entry level (research labs excluded, of course, but those have a very high bar). You might even have to hide the academics entirely (PhD -> Research Programming). Another common problem is academics trying to sell their PhD as project management or engineering management to bypass entry level. PhDs are often exactly that, but industry never sees it that way, so don't try it unless you're getting tons of bites already.
Here's the problem: everyone in industry knows (or has heard of) a PhD who always drags their feet on engineering work and instead chases novel tangents that don't add value to the actual product, unless management actively identifies this and heads it off. From an engineer's perspective, or an engineering management perspective, that person is deadweight at best and toxic at worst. You need to avoid being associated with this at all costs. 100% laser focusing on your engineering qualifications (as opposed to academic qualifications) is a start; burying the academics entirely is the extreme response.
Never mention the specific problems with your PI in the interviews, just keep it general: the work/life balance and comp packages offered by academia are increasingly holding you back from (401k / homeownership / kids / paragliding & mountain climbing) and after tolerating it for 6-8 years you're ready for a change.
Needless to say, don't let anyone in the hiring process see stream-of-conscious style writing. Complete sentences, proper capitalization, spelling, and proof-reading are important signals.
Explicitly mentioning willingness to relocate can help, even if you've already theoretically ticked a box somewhere.
> i wrote and app for a well-known start-up in my area and then they ghosted me.
Hiring is astonishingly dysfunctional and rejections frequently happen for a mind-boggling array of dumb reasons that reflect purely on the company. This is far more true for industry than for grantsmanship, where people usually at least read your proposal and rationalize their choices. There's too much noise to back-propagate into your self-confidence. This is just a matter of figuring out the filters and rolling the dice enough to overcome the intrinsic failure rate.
If an application process is laborious enough that it's hindering you from rolling the dice enough (writing an app might fall into this category), drop it and give them that feedback.
> i just don't want my family to have to go through it....
Times are hard, transitions are tough, and you've just spent 6 years getting your blood sucked by a vampiric system that didn't even let you build up a safety buffer. There's no shame in accepting their support.
> creeping thoughts of uselessness, wasted life
Walking away from a research career tends to leave those, especially when people find that PhDs have a negative value on the entry-level job market. The news gets much better past entry-level, though. Both tech and communication skills translate, and people will believe it when they see it, which works against you now but in short order it will work in your favor. With the prestige of a PhD and the communications skills it develops, you will be the good foot your team puts forward, and ten years down the road, this fact and the letters after your name will give you a serious leg up if you want to keep climbing the ladder.
> ..i think my going to find some open source projects to contribute to...i think that might be a good way of doing things.
Probably not. I think your time is better spent trying to crack the HR filter code, working on self-presentation, and playing the numbers game. I'm missing a lot of information and it's ultimately your call, but self-doubts of the "If I just had one more resume line item" variety are vampiric in the same way that academia is: they'll suck your energy into efforts that nobody else will reward you for and there will always be one more thing to do.
If you're going to do projects, at least keep them minimum-viable and focus on the most in-demand search terms you don't yet have on your resume. My guess is you've maxed your "legit coding" stat and need to focus elsewhere.