Ironically, the author is quick to provide answers that please executives, and slow to offer dangerous questions that would displease them. Questions like how the company's short-term optimization was causing a long-term loss on user retention. Or how certain executive-sponsored beliefs were hurting user trust. Researchers who ask those questions tend not to stick around too long, even before 2021. Those who remain self-select into safer "middle" research; they and their department have been pummeled into submission by the organization.
The author turns a blind eye to this corruption; the author points the finger at researchers, not executives. The author also forgets the history that users made the business successful [1]. Today, however, the internal hierarchies and forward momentum of many tech companies depends on a selective understanding of users [2]. Good research slows down that momentum, it aims for good-enough understanding, it asks important questions. And when important questions collide with the status quo, they are not tolerated.
Or to put in simple terms, from a chief of staff to a middle manager: "Nevermind you 'why', why ain't in your repertoire no more".
[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/before.html "Mark Zuckerberg didn't succeed because he was an expert on startups. He succeeded despite being a complete noob at startups, because he understood his users really well."
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35597279 "The logic that the CPO applied at the time was some pretty sporty mental gymnastics: "we optimize for conversion (looker to booker) because that's a proxy to actually delivering value to the customer."