Excellent read. I found myself relating this to the division between hacker types and the MBA types. I think the comparison is close as sometimes the product people are the MBA people.

As a hacker, I enjoy having large blocks of time to create what I think is good and not coding some autocratic vision of a product. As I've grown older though, I have come to appreciate and value the interaction between MBA types and myself. In one particular project an MBA type brought me valuable information about what we were doing well, how we compared against competitors, and what he thought our customers wanted. He then told me to run with it and stepped out of the way. I thought that was pretty neat.

Another thought - A quote from the article:

"A sudden rise in Long Beards simply copying Product People Products but doing it cheaper using their cost reducing backend skills."

reminded of the Paul Graham essay "Copy What You Like"

http://paulgraham.com/copy.html

... and copying something you like is probably a good way to bridge the gap between back end "long beard" and product designer.