The problem with the way you frame this whole article is that it comes down to the silicon valley ideal of "If we build it, and it's good, they will come, and they will purchase". This is true for a lucky few, and only up to a point. You've clearly worked for some companies where you've been lucky enough for this to be true fairly often.

Too often in our industry, sales and marketing is looked at as some sort of manipulative evil. "If we have to sell it, then it must not be good, because the customer recognizes and purchases only greatness".

With any of these things, the dose is the poison. If you ratchet up 'growth hacking' to a crazy degree, you get LinkedIn style contact scraping, or Uber level competitiveness with its now obvious downsides. But plenty of people implement these tactics without going overboard, and without harming or offending their users. I love the one-click buy button on Amazon. Does this button make me more likely to purchase something I might've hemmed and hawed about? Of course! Is that bad? Occasionally maybe? But overall I certainly enjoy it.

Everything in moderation.

I agree that it's hard to put every thought into a scoped article, but I feel like there's too much of an 'us vs them' mentality here. Why is the little hint that this AirBnB is being looked at by multiple people not user friendly? What if they don't get it, then come back two days later and realize it's been booked? Is that a good result or a bad result for the user?

Every business is a balancing act between competing interests, constantly prioritizing. I don't think it's healthy to turn it into warring factions. I'd avoid it if I could. Just like we empathize with our users, we can empathize with the business side. Give them the benefit of the doubt.