Not everyone lives in San Francisco or New York where they feel they must bill $100 p/h just to make rent. A smart person in an emerging economy where $500 per month puts them on a higher part of the local income curve could certainly realize that they can compete in a global marketplace on price. This does not necessarily make them incompetent, in fact it's not a bad way to "hack" oneself out of poverty.
Besides, many software applications are alternatives to excel spreadsheets or to handwritten HTML websites and don't necessarily require the hippest programmers who are well studied on the latest technologies. A customized rails scaffold can go a long way to solve a lot of real business problems, and doesn't HN often talk about the value of producing an "MVP"?