Technical experience and expertise is no longer enough to be successful in the software business. As a developer you are only one source of technical expertise, competing with other sources, including offshore workers and libraries on GitHub and npm. To make it you have to have well-cultivated soft skills and be exactly what your client is looking for. This is increasingly true of nine-to-fivers -- for whom an entry-level job requires at least three years' experience in whatever framework the company is using as well as "cultural fit" (a proxy for who knows what kind of discrimination) -- but it's still especially true of freelancers. If you're not exactly what your client needs, you're out. And if you're in the Valley startup scene, where every new JavaScript framework has apocalyptic implications and no one over thirty is to be trusted per the words of God-Emperor Zuckerberg, then what your clients need is for you to be young, hip, and smart -- but not wise to the fact that the latest stuff is yesterday's advancements, warmed over and retooled to hide the deficiencies in today's tech. Or at least you can't let them know you're wise. Them being the people with the money.

If you want to make it in this world, fuck your craft. Crafts are for evenings and weekends. Work on your hustle instead. Look up some hot new framework and build a thing in it, then prepare some slides and give a talk -- to no one, in your room -- about what you learned so the words roll off easy when you're trying to impress somebody at your local meetup. Stock up on Just For Men so you can still pass for 28. If you want to be where the true advances in the field are, go back to college and get a Ph.D. or at least a master's because blockchain, AI, machine learning -- these require more math than the average baccalaureate college grad has been prepared with. (But mind your love life while there; if you fuck the wrong girl you are automatically assumed to have raped her per Title IX regulations.) And robotics and IoT require deep engineering backgrounds.

If making it in Hollywood means sucking Harvey Weinstein's dick, then you know what you've gotta do. Get on your knees, or walk out the door and do something else. It's not fair and it's not just, but this is the world we live in.

OP here. I...totally feel this way. I'll be 30 mid next month. I feel this every day, but I also have to stay positive and kick my own ass.

Reinventing the wheel is so totally exhausting....what is your field or expertise? I might have some people I can connect you to (?)