There were many differences for me though. For one I had a rich network (she doesn’t mention this) so when, a couple of years ago, my gf urged me to get a job I ended up with a lot of recruiter calls. But TBH they couldn’t grok my bg and I’m not really a big company guy.
Also I already had multi-year gaps in my work history so this wasn’t an existential issue for me as it might be for most people.
Third, I’m male and the biases in business are different. Not just in business: a father traveling with a kid is offered all sorts of help and accommodation while a woman with kids is largely invisible. I could write a whole book on this! But on the business side I wasn’t asked the kinds of family questions that I hear women are asked. In fact “I had to become a full time parent” is usually received with sympathy rather than as a sign of unseriousness.
In the end I did what I usually do which is start a company. My co founder is a widow, and also a former software developer, and she struggled* more like the author of this piece. The idiots who didn’t hire her really missed out!
My gf’s path involved an unexpected hack: she took only a few years off when her kids were small but she and her then husband needed the income so she started working for a tiny consulting boutique, initially part time. That let her slowly transition into consulting on her own.
* Disclaimer: we have never discussed this directly though: this comes through when we talk about hiring.