Yes, I guess I did end up reading it differently. Part of my point was that Sheryl Sandberg was "enormously fortunate" from the get-go: Ivy League education, Lawrence Summers as her mentor, and so forth. For me, as a child of the Working Class, I ended up asking myself, Do I really give a flip whether women can rise to the top ranks of the technology industry? No. That's an issue for an extremely small, privileged group of people to begin with.
Do I really care who's in the top ranks of the technology industry, male or female? No.
Understand that I'm not denying the existence of a glass ceiling. I would just be more engaged, and more sympathetic, to an article, for example, about women trying to become middle managers at Walmart, rather than an article like this one, about a small handful of women becoming millionaires in the technology industry.
I don't know for sure, and I could easily be wrong, but I would guess it's possible that by now it's not that hard for women to become middle managers at Walmart.
In fact, my feeling is that in most professional fields women are represented at many levels -- especially on the lower rungs, like middle managers at Walmart -- except at the very top, where they are still a tiny minority. And apparently the minority is even smaller in the tech industry, which isn't known for being particularly female-friendly in the first place. But it happens in other big companies, as well as in public office and other areas.
That doesn't directly affect me in any way I can think of (my own profession is fairly woman-friendly; the editor of the newspaper where I work is a woman; I'm not a millionaire; I'm not all that interested in the tech industry; I don't have daughters, etc.). But it's important to me in the same way, say, marriage equality is important to me even though it doesn't affect me directly, because I want everybody to have the same opportunities.
What's the solution, in this case? I think it's structural and institutional and societal. Sandberg thinks it's more personal -- that the problem is that women aren't stepping forward and grabbing the bull by the horns. I disagree with her, but I found it interesting to hear her side.