Always, in all the limited history of the world of corporate communications, attribution of a statement or a decision is meant to assign blame and infamy. This is corporate speech! It plays by different rules than the kids gloves stuff the 22 year old engineer hears from his 30 year old engineering manager.
I mean, it's called `git blame` for a reason. For every 1 person clicking "Annotate" to see who wrote some excellent code, there are 99 people clicking it to see whom to blame.
Your comment about git blame pierces me, but I still think you are off base about this thing specifically - Paul Grahm is talking about someone he respects, that he feels does not get seen as occupying an important role/decision maker due to eschewing credit.
It may pattern match as blame (and I think that heuristic about corporate speech is probably a good one), but I don't think that tracks in this context. Partially because it doesn't make sense on the personal and emotional level, and partially because it doesn't read as blame at all.
I mean, it's called `git blame` for a reason. For every 1 person clicking "Annotate" to see who wrote some excellent code, there are 99 people clicking it to see whom to blame.