> any Google or Facebook developer for quality and exceeding expectations
Something about basic economics tells me that's an exaggeration. But I do agree with your point that there are hidden talents to be found on sites like Fiverr.
I could think of a few ways that this makes total sense.
$50 is $400 in an 8 hour day. There are places where $1000-1500 covers you for the month, even with non-local, white guy pricing.
My hourly comes out to "only" $20/hr more, but my apartment alone is likely a few hundred more than this guy's entire monthly expense profile.
He's going to get consistent work at this price point, so he won't have to hustle for contacts. That's more time billed or spent on the beach.
Stepping away from the economics and getting into comparison to Google/FB engineers, there are tons of people that could outproduce many Google engineers in a startup setting. They just aren't good at Leetcode problems or never took a shot at FB/Google. A lot of stuff just works as an engineer at Google that you don't get for free elsewhere. They're good at leveraging the output of some truly amazing engineers across their org. They're also generally overstaffed.
This is hilarious. There are places were $300 covers you for the month. I was paying $7 a day rent at a hotel at one stage.
Assuming you can get 1800 hours worth of work a year for $50/hour, that’s $90K a year. That puts you at the 84 percentile of individual income in the US.
https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/
If I were living in a smaller city like the one I came from, $50/hour would lead to a very comfortable life.
Heck, because of $poor_career_choices, I didn’t make $90K until 15 years in my career and by then I had a big house in the burbs (not the most affluent area of town but I was single. I didn’t care about the school system it was safe enough)