It's not too late to go back! Rails and Laravel are still insanely popular and productive for getting work done.

I'm also disappointed that real frontend expertise is not valued as highly as a traditional backend engineer. Think about someone like an Architect. You could say that they are glorified artists (yes, I know they do more than that) and they are highly valued for their artistic input as well as their professional advice; but it's also not unheard of to have an architect solely provide artistic direction and a structural engineer provide support.