I disagree completely. I have hard times parsing the text. Simple icons are a life saver for me in big data tables
And wouldn't colors be just as helpful?
Anyway, they should design for the majority. Or use some configurable approach, like with CSS, to make everybody happy. Opinionated is so last year.
Another non-negligible advantage of icon is, that it is language agnostic. Not everyone is fluent in language they have to use.