Recently a poster at a company board made the comment to the outgoing FE's "sorry you made a bad career choice." I disagree with his comments, as I'm a FE myself, as well as having played FO and Captain on three-man cockpit aircraft. However, he also had a point, however poorly phrased it might have been. A number of FE's who were losing their jobs as the last of the FE seats were disappearing became frustrated at their inability to upgrade, to to flight times.
Many of those FE's felt that because they had years (many years) of experience in type, they ought to be naturally upgraded to a pilot seat. The problem for them was that their long years of hard work and dedication weren't in a pilot seat. The FE seat is not at all the same as a pilot seat, as you're aware. Most of those in the pilot seat had 20+ years of experience as pilots, to get in the seat in the first place...myself included. These guys wanted to get a little bit of flight experience and then be heavy drivers. Not so.
If you've got 400 hours or so of experience and 11,000 hours of FE time, you're a 400 hour pilot, and shouldn't express frustration at an inability to progress in that position. I've known many pilots who shortcut the system, jumping into an advanced cockpit with a few hundred hours, only to find they lacked the pilot in command experience to upgrade. They'd tried to run before they could walk, and they had to go back to the instruction arena, or a piston airplane somewhere to fly night freight, before they could return to continue in the track they'd once been in.
Don't blame congress. 1,500 hours of flight time and a requirement for an ATP is very minimal. Not a big thing to ask of someone flying large, heavy equipment. It really doesn't matter that you have 11,000 hours of FE time. It really doesn't matter that you have a mechanic certificate. Many of us do. What matters is your pilot time, and it's very low. This isn't a big slap in the face for you. It's not the end of the world. You're attempting to start in a new position. You wouldn't expect to get 400 hours in helicopters and then race to the top in the helicopter business...it's a new track. Same for piloting. You've had a sampling, but you really need to gain more piloting experience, and you can certainly do that. All of us had to do it, and you can too.
Did you make a bad career choice as a Flight Engineer? I don't think so. It's an honorable profession. Never the less, if one desired to be a pilot one could put it in context and say one has spun one's wheels for 35 years, not being a pilot...and in that context, yes, it's a poor career choice. It's a great choice of its own accord, but not when it comes to becoming a pilot because those 11,000 hours aren't pilot time.
You've every chance to become a pilot with a career, if you wish. No reason why not. Expectations of transitioning to the right seat of heavy equipment may or may not be realistic for you...you may need to go back and fill in the many gaps that you're missing in your experience. In my opinion, anyone making the transition ought to do so, because there's a great deal of basic experience missing that is fundamental to judgement in the pilot seat.
If you're truly fed up with the industry and ready to move on, so be it. That's your choice entirely. Don't do so under the misguided and false opinion, however, that the industry has squeezed you out. That's just not the case. The same opportunity exists for you as for the rest of us, but you can't shortcut the line. Perhaps in times past, but those times are over. You're going to have to go back and get the same experience that the rest of us did to qualify us to sit in those seats and make the decisions necessary to safely operate.
You could get the experience in a year, or a year and a half, if you try...Flight Express or other operations where you bust your butt, fly it off, and come out ready to be hired with currency and experience in hand...will qualify you to go get the ATP and get hired. With that in hand plus your 11,000 hard earned hours, you'll be a lot more marketable.
Think of it like this: more than a few guys have gone back to college to pick up a degree, years after they're past their school days...and made it work. Same thing for you, but with flight experience and certification. Obtaining the ATP is realistic, but it's not an overnight thing, and it does require a substantial temporary cut in pay, a worse schedule, and some effort. It sounds like you've already decided it's not worth the effort, and that's something only you can decide. You need to understand, however, that it's very possible; the outcome is entirely in your hands.