> I appreciate the point of the article as written, which I think is to encourage engineers to push harder against the grain when their plans for the product really are the right idea,
My interpretation of the article is different.
I think the author is merely drawing attention to a force that pushes businesses in a particular direction, without proposing any specific solution.
The article doesn't say he had an alternative design or vision he wishes he had pushed harder, or anything like that. In fact he's full of praise for Manifest V3, which he considers the most elegant technical solution to a real problem, which he considered an indefensible security and privacy risk.