I read it. I thought about it before posting. I complain a lot about the same issues in other HN postings. I think corporate America has lost its collective mind and that daily working life is mostly trying to stay sane in the face of absurdity. But here's the thing: I don't feel sorry for the author. Not even a little bit. Not even after having gone through some of the same issues myself. I don't because working for a living isn't supposed to be enjoyable or fun, it's supposed to put food on the table and a roof over your head. Whether you're in tech or someplace else, that is the point. The world owes you NOTHING. You have to find a way to create value. That's pretty tough when millions of others possess the exact same skills as you do.
Software development is a "lucky" field for those who have the brain power to complete the work. There is no "lowering the bar" in this field, not really. We try and try and the results speak for themselves. Some few have the aptitude and can learn and expand, most will never be able to. There's no amount of social engineering that can fix that. It is astounding how technology breaks with all human wishes and desires and becomes its own thing, not to be dominated, only harnessed.
I have always been against affirmative action for minorities or for women for the very reason mentioned in the article--how demoralizing is it to know you got in via a quota versus being able to actually hack it? I'm all for giving anyone a try out, but they have to measure up in some way and have an improvement arc and I have run into this as a mentor time and again--who to expend more energy on because they have huge potential and who to counsel into project management or some other area (which by the way, those other areas have value, they aren't all worthless, so don't read into that). My own company is going through yet another "diversity" initiative this year. It's Cultural Marxism, identity politics, find root because the social engineers enjoy tinkering. The end result will be negative for the company, wait and see. If they survive, it will be because intelligent people innovated, not because bars were lowered or outcomes were tinkered with.
This is getting long, so my best advice is this: If you don't want to be a developer, don't. You will find some other kind of work to do that suits you. The pay differential is real, but I think that is more a comment on how bad other career paths are doing overall versus how "privileged" software developers are--demand better pay and better working conditions and stop going along to get along. If the world's biggest social engineers got their way, we would all be serfs on plantations, paid in company script and completely redundant. That some of us aren't that means there is hope for humanity.