As someone who seriously considered becoming an academic economist, I think you're spot on in your analysis about human motivation except for one thing: altruism.
Altruism does exist, and not just because people want the "good feeling" of having done "good deeds."
I've seen Levitt of the University of Chicago speak several times about an altruism experiment that economists conducted showing the lack of altruism in people. In response, one of the audience members once sent him $20 in an envelope and said, "Explain this."
While that's a facetious example, there's plenty of examples of more self-less altruism towards strangers. I think plenty of research shows the altruistic motive towards families, which is partly motivated by evolution.
But altruism towards strangers?
I think an interesting experiment to conduct would be a double blind experiment regarding altruism. Put someone in a situation where they can help, hurt, or ignore someone in need, and there is no cost to the subject of picking any of the three options. But they get no reward for doing the good deed, and no one is watching.
(Of course this experiment is sort of impossible by design, cuz the experimenter has to be watching)
How many people choose to do the good deed without social affirmation of their good deed?
Maybe I'll reconsider pursuing that PhD in Economics.
I think the best parts of the article don't deal with gender or with Donglegate at all.
""When considering the dismal numbers of women (as well as African-American and Latino men) in tech, the meritocratic presumption is that these minorities aren’t good at or interested in technology; otherwise, there would be more of them.""
She has a point in that minorities are also heavily under-represented in tech. I want to put aside the gender politics for now because that's not where I feel the author is strongest. I feel that she's making a good point by pointing out essentially: okay, you guys claim you aren't sexist. That you treated Adria poorly because she was an attention whore and not just a woman.
But what explains the under-representation of other minorities in tech? Why aren't there as many African America n or Latino American programmers?
I feel like she's right in saying the tech world isn't truly meritocratic.
I attended one of the schools in the Chicago suburbs. A public school. I think that my high school experience was pretty good; even comparable to some of the Minnesotan "miracle school" experiences. I'm just saying, before you move away from Chicago, check out the suburbs, where all the privileged people have fled to.
Oh wow, your first two sentences were so misleading. "I have been a dreamer all my life." I thought you meant DREAMER, as in undocumented immigrant. "It took me until last year to figure this out." You didn't know you were an illegal immigrant until last year? :P
Your post is pretty melodramatic, but I just want to reiterate that 30 is not too late at all. Plenty of people never come to the realization that you do way past their 30s and turn too late to others for help. I'm glad you realize that you can't accomplish things in a vacuum. (I'm 23, and I still am working on getting my Bachelor's, though most of my friends are in grad school by now. I don't feel like I'm less of a person because I didn't follow the "set schedule" of life, and you shouldn't either)
That being said, another good point that I'm sure has been made already is not to focus too much on being the absolute best in whatever field you try. So you could program for a million years and never be as good as so-and-so. So what?
No one usually starts out and suddenly she's a programming whiz. We all started somewhere, and just because you got stuck at pointers in C++ doesn't mean that you should just give up. No one has just breezed through all programming problems or concepts in the world like they're no big deal. Stop comparing yourself to an imaginary image of perfection and start doing things like the real person that you are.
My advice is to do one thing first: read. Learn! You seem like you have the drive to do a business, but perhaps not much of an idea of what kind of business. So read, or watch MOOC videos if that's how you learn best--really build a solid knowledge base of what it takes to run a business, what sorts of business ideas you'd be interested in, etc.
I think after dreaming and before doing, you should prepare, and that's a step that I feel might be lacking in others' steps-to-success plans for entrepreneurship.
After you've prepared, just (fking) do it. Don't be afraid to fail; failing is how we learn. Don't listen to naysayers who only believe that people can accomplish acts of genius or good in their youth--human history isn't built on the accomplishments of young prodigies alone. Instead, believe in yourself, because no one else will.
However,I bet this will be far less popular than the Google Fiber news.