Did you read the whole article or just pulled out that snippet?
I read up to that point and after already trying rippetoes starting strength program, which I immediately plateau'd on within not even a week and a half of it while being a total beginner 7 years ago. I already have a low opinion on him based on that alone and then after indeed reading the whole thing, and then reading that silly crap.. that about sealed the deal at that point
and yes I was pushing almost 7k calories a day at that point, I was eating enough before anyone even comes out and says otherwise.
It's impossible to plateau on Rippetoe's Starting Strength program that fast, because for beginners (as you say you were) he has you start on a low enough weight to allow gains to be made. Which means if your 5 rep max squat was 250, then you would probably start at maybe 60-65% of that. He also has you increase the weight at a low enough rate that would, again, prevent plateauing early, much less 1.5 weeks in.
You clearly didn't follow the program properly at all.
And I'm not even advocating that everyone should make great gains on his program - it's that only an idiot would think they plateaued on ANY workout program 1.5 weeks in. Typical gym bro American.
I followed the program exactly to the tee, not only does he increase the weight too fast.. but doing it as fast as he does caused a very quick burnout on my system
I also found it funny as **** that just those simple lifts would be all that I would need to actually get bigger really fast. It's the same repeated crap you see on any bodybuilding forum, just like how they repeat about needing a gram of protein per bodyweight..
I added 20 lbs to to my deadlift which was the most out of all the lifts ( which is pretty much terrible for a beginner ) before being completely unable to increase the weight anymore via his program.
After banging my head against the wall like an idiot ( funny you think i'm the idiot here ) for about a month trying to make it work, I stopped and started doing the smartest thing I ever did which was listen to my body and dropping these immobile "must do this on this day" workouts
My body simply does not respond to that high of a weight, call me an idiot all you want