I hate to say it, but I am approaching 35 and already feel too "old" for my own good. Many of my bosses have been 5+ years younger than me. I am eyeballing jo

I hate to say it, but I am approaching 35 and already feel too "old" for my own good. Many of my bosses have been 5+ years younger than me. I am eyeballing jobs that are paying exactly what I got paid 8 years ago, just because they are local/family friendly. I am not experienced enough with management or executive roles to take one. I am too much of a generalist to get a senior role in a given field, except the one field I specialize in, which is fairly useless when it comes to paid jobs. I'm not a competitive coder, but I can meet any reasonable deadline. Unfortunately, the trend is now to value the former much more than the latter because it is easier to measure in the interview process. The majority of jobs out there (frankly) do not require much skill for functional results, so there is someone out there 10 years younger than me who can put in more time for less pay. Additionally, there are people with 2 or 3 years of industry programming experience making over $250k. It sets a weird baseline that makes it impossible to scale up for more experienced coders. The most elite people in the valley struck it rich fresh out of college. These are the people who dictate the flow of cash in the software world. What reason do they have to believe that an old software engineer is valuable, even as they themselves grow older? I don't expect the world to be fair. But I feel like there has to be some sort of value in experience?