Improvement proposals are valid and useful — but the hook used is false.

Roughly simplifying, the hook is:

“The UXR field is being decimated because UXRs do wrong research and don't bring value to the business” — this is not true.

There is no correlation between “bringing value to the business / doing the right research” X “the field is dying”.

It would be possible to present improvement proposals without using this hook, such as: “What the best UXR I know are doing”.

The article went in the direction of wanting to show that there is a non-existent correlation. Apart from disregarding the market moment of mass layoffs to reduce and level wages adopted by companies.

That false hook point aside, it's a good article.