What this article is saying is you need someone with experience to make the right judgement. This means you need to find someone that has already gone on the 5-8 year roller coaster that a developer goes through. This from the 'just get something working', to astronaut over-architecture, to practicality that might come with running many projects and being through many successes and failures.
A good developer might be at any stage in that process and it is really a timing thing. Typically after 10 years most developers have this as long as they have not become too pessimistic and have experienced many platforms, not religious to any of them.
Experience with a beginners mind that is willing to innovate still, is the perfect balance of a 'great' developer.
A very smart developer who I respect once said something like: when you are young, you have lots of energy and want to learn/use the latest technology. As you get older and gain more experience, you start to see the patterns. It's not about the technology, there are repeated themes and solutions. But when you start realizing this and have accumulated 7 years of experience, you may be transitioning out and wanting to begin starting a family. So the people who might be most qualified might be wanting to leave the intensity of coding for the relative stability of management.
So perhaps n years of experience is a cludgy filter for the relative graybeards who understand that technology is just a tool, not an end in itself.
A good developer might be at any stage in that process and it is really a timing thing. Typically after 10 years most developers have this as long as they have not become too pessimistic and have experienced many platforms, not religious to any of them.
Experience with a beginners mind that is willing to innovate still, is the perfect balance of a 'great' developer.