I think you missed the point of the post which is not what it'd cost to build Instagram, but to build a MVP camera/album + backend, similar to the basic functio

I think you missed the point of the post which is not what it'd cost to build Instagram, but to build a MVP camera/album + backend, similar to the basic functionality that Instagram offers, without the level of polish. As for the $50 rate, it kind of depends. $50 an hour, at a 40 hour workweek year round puts you at roughly $100k a year, pretty reasonable salary I think at an experience level between jr and sr. And in a startup you can even do a bit of equity financing and pay a lower salary, in terms of pure cashflow $50 could even be on the high end in highly bootstrapped startups. But that's if you employ someone. If you outsource it to a decent dev team, then no way, you always pay a substantial multiple. For example I recall at my job as a student doing administrative work at a big corp, I had a $15 an hour wage and billed the client $120 an hour, no joke. My boss had a $50 an hour salary and billed $400. $150 and up per hour is pretty typical afaik.