Testing strong engineers to destruction in a lab should only be carried out by competent materials scientists.
You end up with thousands of lines of insecure, buggy code that will most likely be scrapped.
The cheapest way to build things is a small team of strong engineers in my experience
And likewise, I have seen technically weak engineers who are capable of getting along with others deliver great output with high business value.
Imho, the fact the author calls some engineers "0's" is the type of egalitarian douchenozzelry that I have seen bring entire teams to a halt, and why I think the author comes off as a blow hard. If you think any person is a zero, the more likely truth is you don't know how to properly asses a person's skills and put them to use where they fit - and that's an eng leadership failure, not an ic failure.
I think this comment does that. In article weak engineers are ones who cannot deliver anything.
That apart, I think there's something to the "stronger in a group" principle.
Weak engineers sap energy from other people making excuses and hunting down people who can do work for them - that is the definition from the article.