I wouldn't actually say that, but I would say that the TLM role works at a very specific stage in a company's lifecycle, and many companies that use it (including Google itself from around 2010 onwards) have long since past that point.
IMHO, the conditions where a TLM role is appropriate are:
1.) You need to be in the company growth phase where you are still trying to capture share of a competitive market, i.e. it matters that you can execute quickly and correctly.
2.) There needs to be significant ambiguity in the technical projects you take on. TLMs should be determining software architecture, not fitting their teams' work into an existing architecture.
3.) No more than 3 levels of management between engineer and person who has ultimate responsibility for business goals, and no more than 6 reports per manager. The mathematically inclined will note that this caps org size at 6^3 = 216, which perhaps not coincidentally, is not much larger than Dunbar's number.
4.) TLMs need to be carefully chosen for teamwork. They need to think of themselves as servant-leaders that clarify engineering goals for the teammates who work with themselves, not as ladder-climbers who tell others what to do.
Without these, there is a.) not enough scope for the feedback advantages of the TLM structure to matter and b.) too much interference from managers outside the team for the TLM to keep up with their managerial duties. But if these conditions are met, IMHO teams of TLMs are the only way to effectively develop software quickly.
Perhaps not coincidentally, these conditions usually coincide with the growth phase of most startups where much of the value is actually created.