It does come from a point of privileged. Steve jobs said "A players hire A+ players. A+ players hire A++ players". That was because he saw A players hiring B players. B Players will hire C players - and so on.
That is all well and good when you are the golden goose that is Apple. Most people just do not get the opportunity to hire like that.
Absolutely. A part of that would have been Steve's legendary ability to convince folks to make the move to Apple even when they had options that looked better at the time. Another part was seeing the potential of those already in the company, another part was just dumb luck.
I believe Job's was providing this perspective more in the late 2000's after he had been through the whole Apple exile/Next thing.
That is all well and good when you are the golden goose that is Apple. Most people just do not get the opportunity to hire like that.