When I said who you know not what you know it was not as a sad reality. My network is my joy. I work in a fairly narrow specialty and we mostly know each other's strengths and weaknesses. We know who we like to work with and who we wish to avoid. We try to attract the talent we like and need to the projects we want to work on.

I don't really know what you mean when you say corporate jobs. I worked most of my career for one of the biggest aerospace companies in the world, so yes that was a corporate job but it was almost always working a part of a small team. Often the work was a joy even though it was a corporate job. Now a work for a much smaller company but as part of a bigger team with more responsibility.

I can't practice my profession, my passion as a free lancer or solo, what I do needs a multi-disciplinary team. Kind of like you can't really play a symphony without an orchestra.