I had the exact same reaction as you to this article after seeing it again, and wanted to share why I've also changed my mind on this. I was in "a feature factory" for few years and absolutely hated it. After leaving and going to a "not-feature factory" AKA "employee-happiness machine", I miss the feature factory.
Imagine you're building a Great Pyramid with 100 workers. The workers can't see the Pyramid and don't care about why a Pyramid is important. Is there time to explain to each worker exactly why they're moving a specific block? What about time to "review" why that one block didn't fit?
"Real work is always a bit messy"
Would you care about anything else other than how quickly each block got into place? The Pyramid can only be completed when all the blocks are in place, and most importantly- each block doesn't have to sit perfectly, and also, you can get by without ever delivering a "perfect block".
This is why product managers will never be 100% aligned with engineers. Product managers see "is the block there" and engineers see "is the block perfectly set" and "why am I not being appreciated?" and "why do they only care about putting down blocks".
It's bizarre to read how this person is so opposed to "up and to the right", that's the key indicator of you business and what will pay your bills. Yes, everyone is always going to be obsessed with revenue and you will never stop hearing about it.
Of course as an engineer- Resolve tech debt. You have to. But from the view at the top, it's a very temporary detour and needs to be resolved quickly so they can continue pumping out features.
Yes, I am making the analogy that engineers should accept being a "slave" to the product manager, or more directly, the product itself.