Not really. The goal is to hire people who get the specific job done for the least amount of money. Lots of companies pay lip service to wanting exceptional people, but they pay crap and have a horrible work environment.
For technical support in a non-technical company, yes. But for an actual tech company, where tech is the product? A company with that philosophy will produce mediocre results and lose in the market.
Certainly the trend-setting giants (MS, Google, Facebook) are seriously trying to hire the best.
> A company with that philosophy will produce mediocre results and lose in the market.
The first part of this sentence is probably correct, the second part is probably incorrect. There are millions (okay, I exaggerate: thousands) of programs out there which do not "lose in the market" despite being mediocre. One of the recipes is specialization: If the decision for a company is "no software or mediocre software" mediocre wins.
Sure, there are exceptions like you point out... but I'm guessing that applied to the groups, this is a non-ridiculous assertion.