I agree with this.
I think you can look at this two ways, over time you incur technical debt for a variety of reasons (if your app is being used or growing in any way). The articles author thinks it is best to start at the bottom and build up your "model layer" from scratch.
People who use an ORM start from above and almost certainly will have to modify their entire software stack to address things like scaling and unusual features along the way. As long as you know your ORM well and can do the rearcitecting this really is not a problem.
Basically whichever approach you take a good developer would end up with the app in roughly the same state.
Personally I would prefer to start with an ORM and work down, just because it is a hell of lot quicker.