Thiel is chock full of this BS, and his success should be disregarded as anything other than the statistical anomaly that it was.
Being anti-Thiel is not a shortcut to actually evaluating something on its own merits.
http://www.quora.com/PayPal/What-strong-beliefs-on-culture-f...
In what ways in Thiel full of BS?
In what ways is this type of thinking myopic and detrimental?
In what situations would you advise someone not to spend their time working on the most important thing they could be doing?
The main problem with a single-priority system is the question of who sets the priority. If the employee is autonomous and trusted (e.g. open allocation) it can work. In a traditional managed environment, you already start out with 2 priority sets: the manager's goals, and the employee's career interests.