The blanket statement was a personal observation about our own hiring, so I can assure you with complete conviction that it is not false. Further I addressed the alternate universe of the start-up world, comprising a tiny, tiny percentage of software developers, and that is what HN caters to.
Just to be clear, I don't like that most candidates outside of the startup-sphere are so Microsoft or Java centric. In fact it is a battle that we constantly have to fight (hire somebody and then have to argue every single decision that isn't the Microsoft Way). Yet I have enough real world development experience that I found that claim so ridiculously detached from reality that the author lost any and all credibility on tech matters.