I read it more as there being a mismatch in promises: the managers promised that their teams are held to high standards, and promised that they expect high comp

I read it more as there being a mismatch in promises: the managers promised that their teams are held to high standards, and promised that they expect high competence from their reports. If going in you believe your definition of high competence is aligned with your managers’, and then discover your manager actually meant “destroys more value than they create” as “highly competent”, I think it’s reasonable to place the blame for the misunderstanding with the manager. It’s true this isn’t necessarily the value-destroying person’s fault, but it is the fault of the manager in avoiding dealing with the fact that they have a report who hurts their team. However as the article points out, once you realize this dynamic you can use your energy to work around the problem rather than spend effort that goes to /dev/null.