You are right, Rob Pike said it was for "large teams". In most places (maybe not Google) "large team" will often mean an average skill level that is mediocre. I do not understand why a large team of very skilled programmers can't build large systems that are very maintainable in more powerful and expressive languages. I do not understand the argument that a language is "too complex" in this context.

edit: You are right and I added this to my top-level comment. The "mediocre programmer" comment is really out of line and a major distraction. I guess I actually think this IS a feature of Go: more maintainable code than C/C++ from mediocre developers. I'm bitter and tired ofdebugging twenty-year old C programs and I wish they were all written in Go. I shouldn't read that into Thompson's or Pike's intentions though.