Yes but this is looking from the micro-POV. The point is to look beyond your own achievements, since in the grand-scale they are really only yours. You should be proud of overcoming your challenges because YOU overcame THEM rather than evaluating them on the merit of their relative differences between other people. This allows you to maintain a sense of self-worth while recognizing that IN GENERAL people like "you" had it "easier" than people like "them".

The micro-scale achievement is not invalidated by the macro-scale injustice.

If I am an excellent businessman, who makes several cruicial business decisions that save my business from disaster - it doesn't really matter whether my industry is in a good position right now. I still survived my own disasters. And it still allows me to empathize with business leaders in failing industries who were able to turn themselves around as well. They may have had it a little harder, but we both still kicked ass and that's what matters. It just means I might be more empathetic to that business leader when something comes up down the road. I think this is analogous.

Your issues and tribulations are still meaningful and important. We're just trying to make macro-scale decisions for macro-scale groups. It doesn't invalidate your accomplishments, seriously. There doesn't have to be a hierarchy. Since there is no way to evenly evaluate every single injustice someone has overcome in their lives, we can only make vague estimations and attempt to correct for them as best as we can. An insistence on maintaining the status quo, would only maintain what is already a flawed situation for many people.

> ...while recognizing that IN GENERAL people like "you" had it "easier" than people like "them".

The problem with this is the legitimacy of the framework for who counts as "like you" and "like them".

If you were born Amish and deaf, you wouldn't see a Manhattan native as being like you at all. But according to the prevailing framework, you're assumed to be more privileged than the Caucasian daughter of a Columbia professor who attended a STEM magnet high school.

It's worth pointing out that generally progressive logic is very pro-self-identification. Except here.

> The micro-scale achievement is not invalidated by the macro-scale injustice.

This point is well taken. Though it misses the point from the article, that people do invalidate and have explicit preferences on the micro scale based on the prevailing framework.

> There doesn't have to be a hierarchy.

Again, I think the objection is that prevailing logic in big corps, including Google apparently, does presume there's hierarchy.

> An insistence on maintaining the status quo, would only maintain what is already a flawed situation for many people.

I haven't seen anyone arguing for the status quo, including the author of the original post. Everyone would love to see more women in tech. The question is what the best way to go about it is and when we know we're done addressing the imbalance.