I think cubano is referring to the mindset that "it's better to skip over 100 good people than to hire one bad apple" which is very silly but a common attitude in certain kinds of organisation.
It really depends on what 1 bad apple is, that it is someone that is not the most productive but is still productive and don't completely harm whatever they work is seems too much but often that is the meaning in use.
I've had this problem when it's time to adjust headcount (smaller, or trying to swap people out to get more done).
I'll keep the Eeyore person that self selects tasks and issues that are of low complexity (say, 2 on a 5 scale) than the self confident idiot who keeps asking for 4/5 stories when they're really only good at 3/5 on a good day.
That jerk is creating 5/5 stories that I have to burn myself out on (they are either notably quiet or loudly in denial when this happens). I don't care how much project management or the marketing guys like him, even an empty desk would be better. At least an empty desk is predictable.
There is not a hiring team out there that even bats 90% let alone 99. The problem is that they significantly hinder their ability to get stuff done when they spend too much of their time in vetting/hiring mode. I've been there and it's no fun at all.
But this is required for the hiring staff to give the appearance of being important and needed within the company. If managers really understood how effectively non-management engineers can find and hire acceptable candidates when you remove the bullshit from the process, they would be confronted with the cognitive dissonance of their choice to staff up an army of HR and recruiters and talk all day about "ZOMG how hard it is to hire a good engineer!" and "look out for the toxic worker" and other such drivel.
Of course there is. At a basic level, that's what hiring is.
With this now-popular attitude that "1 bad hire is worse then 100 good ones" or something like that, how could it be anything else?
Imagine the pressure that puts on the hiring teams.