This sounds reasonable, though if you hire the Best-Programmer-Available regardless of the presence of a specific technical skill, I'd be surprised if they really take a year to get firing on all cylinders. Maybe a month or two at most would be what I would expect in the sorts of places I've worked.

Sure, some places (especially in startup land) can't even afford to wait even a month, but that doesn't make the dynamic any less of an antipattern. Instead it's just one of the painful tradeoffs people make while they need to manage their runway extra closely.