This article is grossly oversimplifying and conflating things. All the examples cited are skewing the results to fit the agenda the author wants to promote. Specifically, the functionality, audience, and valuation are creating insane $$$-to-engineer ratios, that the author then tries to claim is the future of the industry.

Functionally, imgur is not very complex. Its an order or 2 of magnitude less complex than say, another "software is eating the world" business like a web-based CRM app. That's not to discredit imgur or Instragram. They are great achievements and successful apps. But it doesn't and shouldn't take dozens and dozens of engineers to make those.

The potential audiences for the examples are, essentially, the world. These apps can gain use very rapidly, and it can disappear just as fast. 1 person can make Flappy birds and the entire world can use it. The people to audience ratio here is huge compared to say, a SaaS invoicing product.

Imgur doesn't have a monetization strategy like, say, a SaaS product like a web CRM, or even something as simple as a WordPress backup SaaS product. Instragram had no business model. How much is it worth? This is where the crazy audience ratio comes in and messed up the results some more by effecting valuation. These valuations are not based on real revenue numbers. They are based on the wish and dream of extracting value from eyeballs. I'm sure they are worth something, but taking a Series A or Series B valuation and extrapolating is murky.

So, low functionality apps, with a huge potential audience, and a completely made up valuation number. Of course you are going to get $10B to 10 engineers ratios. That doesn't mean this is a trend in the industry, let alone business/enterprise software.