Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
I'd venture that if you're going to say, "suggesting this marginalizes people," you should back it up with why you think that. It does no good for anyone to say something like that (and in doing so, heavily imply that the person making the statement is some kind of icky paraiah) and leave it at that.
Elitism would be saying "this group of people should be in charge because they know what they are doing; that group of people should not be in charge because they don't".
I think the author is in fact correctly recognising that different people enjoy a significantly different kind of software work from each other, and are unhappy with the other kind, and both kinds are valuable.
Recognising when there are different kinds of work and allowing people to choose for themselves which one suits them is not elitism.
Imagine if someone on a factory floor said "I've just realised that welding and painting are different kinds of work and most people greatly prefer one over the other. Perhaps we should label the jobs and let people gravitate to the kind they like so people aren't as unhappy."
Should we be up in arms and call that elitism? No, we should ensure both roles have equal status and recognition, but not hide the differences.
However, "VendorOps" does sound like a slightly derogatory word, so a better word might help.
> "I've just realised that welding and painting are different kinds of work and most people greatly prefer one over the other. Perhaps we should label the jobs and let people gravitate to the kind they like so people aren't as unhappy."
Except it's more like, "We hire people to design and assemble complex machines and some people make their own tools while others buy them. Anyway, the people who buy them are basically incompetent and when they claim to prefer focusing on producing the machines rather than tools for building them it's because they are scared of losing their jobs. Let's give them a new title, ideally that trivializes the work."