As a product manager, both for consumer products and enterprise products, it's hard to disagree. The more generalizable model for this is that engineers (and designers) should have a deep, empathic understanding of users, customers, and the market. At many consumer product companies (like Apple!), the customers look an awful lot like the engineers. And at enterprise software companies, they rarely do.

Of course, not every company has strong enough (or interested enough) engineers or gives their engineers enough time to engage with users, identify and select opportunities to improve, identify and select solutions to those opportunities, and ideate on design. That's where product management should come into play.