uh, there is so much questionable things in this piece I don't even know where to start.

First the scale, "A players (top 20%), B players (70%) and C players (bottom 10%)". It assumes there is an objective metric with which people can be ranked, and it assumes that there is a defined pool of people that you can classify people.

I have an experience from a company restructuring. Two managers wanted to get me into their team and were having conversations with me. Both kind of outlined the teams they want to build and which colleagues to include (and which colleagues they would try to keep in the other team). Funnily enough, they were sometimes thrilled about wanting to add people to the team I knew that were C players (my subjective ranking scale), and at times made condascending remarks about true A players (my subjective ranking scale). It's just that their ranking scale was different from mine. One of the rock-stars they all wanted was a net negative person in terms of problems they created for the company, and problems they solved for the company. Both managers held that person in highest regards. It just wasn't as visible for managers, how problematic the work of that person was

Conclusion: Ranking is subjective / depends on the person who ranks. Management does not take all aspects into account.

Next simplification is, that "B players" hire "C players", while "A players" hire "A players". Obviously this is BS, because as I just outlined, ranking people depends on the person making the ranking. But it shows the fallacy of the meritocracy-thinking. So consider this. The person making this statement considers themself closely aligned to the "A player" group (if not to be part of the A player group). They "must be", otherwise they wouldn't be in leadership positions. So implicitly this line is about not trusting the team to make hiring decisions. It is a rationalization of one's position.

Later on the articles goes on about interview situations and I think the descriptions of the situations are actually quite fair. But again, I don't believe the author draws the proper conclusions.

"Unfortunately, he wasn't enthusiastic about joining our company — understandably. He would have been working with people much less capable" It's not quite clear from the article whether this is a statement the applicant made, or whether its a conclusion from the author. I believe it is the latter. I have been in similar situations when I knew more than those who screened me (it's so common, you don't need to be smarter or more educated, you just have done different kind of projects over your career). Knowing more than those who interviewed me was never a red flag, in fact, it's the common situation with a manager who has not engineered in a while.

Oh, and isn't "One of the other interviewers was a famous figure in an academic branch of engineering" a case of an "A player" not hiring an "A player"?

Please spare us with these simplified meritocracy-wisdoms. Let's talk about the interesting aspects of hiring: Hiring the right people and building good and effective teams. How to get a diverse skill set into the team, how to foster good communication, how to balance innovation and operations skills.