My reading of that statement was not that good engineers won't use the right tool for the job, but rather will use the best they can, and deal with imperfections. Almost as a rephrasing of the old adage: "'Tis a poor carpenter that blames his tools".

There are often factors outside the control of the engineers that dictate certain things that can and cannot be used. Sometimes they are political and sometimes they are more technical. The ability to get things done in spite of externally imposed limitations is something that should be praised. Even something as simple as the choice of platform can be a cause of not using the ideal solution... say there are only X, Y and Z allowed languages - using the cool library for language W is off the table, even though it is highly regarded as the correct and best solution.