I fail to see how it's irrelevant. In this article, someone who was a man until a year or two ago used herself as the perfect example of a woman who succeeds in the tech world.
Second, it's quite possible that being a transgender woman would subject the author to even more discrimination, so what's your point? That Yust doesn't count as a real woman succeeding in the tech world because she was born with male intellectual attributes?
Chromosomes are directly responsible for most developmental differences between living creatures. If someone uses this fact to convince themselves it's why women aren't seen in the tech world, Amber has done nothing to disprove it.
Amber has benefitted from male privilege for most of her life. If people believe male privilege, brogrammer environments, etc. are why women aren't seen in the tech world, Amber has done nothing to disprove it.
She is literally the worst possible piece of evidence to use to disprove the stereotype.
This is not a burner account and I am not transphobic.
Addressing only this part: "Chromosomes are directly responsible for most developmental differences between living creatures."
Chromosomes are only part of sex differentiation in utero. Many of the developing embryo's/fetus' sex characteristics, both neurological and physiological, are the result of how it responds to the particular mix of hormones it is exposed to at different developmental stages. Sometimes the levels of androgens and estrogens are not consistent throughout the entire development process so the baby can be born with neurological characteristics of one sex but physiological characteristics of the other.
In humans, at least, hormones are responsible for the majority of developmental differences. Chromosomes usually determine what hormones will be released at different stages of development, but this doesn't always hold true - e.g. de la Chapelle syndrome and complete androgen insensitivity syndrome.
Trans men and women usually undergo hormone replacement therapy which sends their body through a second puberty; they develop the secondary sex characteristics of their transitioned sex. These hormones also influence emotional responses and other psychological aspects in the same way they would influence a cis (non-trans) person.
Several studies [1] have shown that there are similarities in brain structure of trans individuals to their cis counterparts. The most common hypothesis used to explain physiological differences in trans individuals is that infants are exposed to androgen levels that are either too high or too low, causing the brain to sexually differentiate towards a different sex than other parts of the body.
So, while trans women may have benefited from male privilege in their lives pre-transition, they may not necessarily "think like men". (And the inverse is true for trans men.)
In addition, wages for trans women tend to fall post-transition, while wages for trans men increase. [2]
Amber faces the same sexism as all women, and her physiology and brain structure are likely quite different than those of a cis man. That she was assigned male at birth is less relevant than you think.
I can't think of someone more apt to share experiences and criticism about treatment of gender in an industry that someone who has literally experienced both sides of it first-hand. (edit: from an exterior appearance standpoint, obviously, but isn't that the very point of this discussion. People are inappropriately judged on their visible, expressed exterior gender rather than by the merit of their contributions?)
Google her. You'll see a lot of news about her suing the DMV over her gender.
At the very least, it confuses everything she says. She spent most of her life as a man, and succeeded as a man... And now she's trying to use her tech articles as an example of a woman succeeding. Some will take the message to be 'You can succeed as a woman, but only if everyone thinks you're a man.' and that's not the case.
* I don't know her and can't speak for how she thinks.
