It's a lot easier to handle feeling like a fraud when you receive no negative feedback with overwhelming positive feedback, and are very confident regarding a certain domain. If someone feels like a fraud even in their "core competency", that can create a lot of unneeded stress and anxiety in their life.
But I agree that intellectual humility is very important to self-growth.
Honestly - this is part of why looking for jobs is so very hard, which is what the author mentions right at the beginning. There are lists of requirements you know you don't meet, and often times you apply, and for reasons that may have nothing to do with how skilled you are, you don't get the job. Maybe you have a few rounds of interviews that seem to go great, but there's no offer.
You start to wonder if your language/skillset is over the hill, if you really aren't so good at code, heck, maybe YOU are too old in SV years.
Something about the job search process really amplifies this feeling. You never know why they think it isn't a fit - but it's only in searching for a job that you are actually getting some external feedback.
And it's tough.
Even if your skillset is in demand and recruiters are crawling all over each other to make you offers, if the companies you really love aren't among them, it makes you wonder.
It's tough. And it's easier to play the games and engage the behavior the author talks about to get "likes", hacker news upvotes, reddit upvotes, whatever, to let you know your views, your languages, your skills are valid.
I've recently tried to get some projects. The required skills are almost always ridiculously specific. It's not unusual that the projects descriptions want you to be an expert in the whole software stack and the project domain. This is a grave problem because people who feel like impostors lose projects to intentional impostors. There are some ways to tackle this problem, but I think it hurts companies and honest developers more than it needs to.
I think the author might have conveyed their point more accurately using the word impostor, rather than fraud. It would also better fit the documented phenomena: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome
I've seen third-hand quite a few instances where people are publicly challenged, even harassed, for their not performing their core competency to someone else's (or even everyone's) standards. Recently one public figure announced they were now seeing a therapist, presumably due in part to that overwhelming negative feedback.
But I agree that intellectual humility is very important to self-growth.