0xB31B1B parent
Spot on. The productivity gradient is extremely steep, and calling this out has become impolite.
IME people who say this in the workplace tend to overestimate the importance of one aspect (usually the product development itself) and ignore the importance of things like taking a product to manufacturing, getting technical costing under control, or adapting to user needs. There's a lot of fluff in the article, but this part in the conclusion and your statements about "A people hiring A people" or the example of Linus' place in the kernel all align:
> It’s a competitive advantage to build an environment where people can be hired for their unique strengths, not their lack of weaknesses; where the emphasis is on composing teams
There's plenty of otherwise "10x" programmers who go outside of their strengths and suffer for it.