* Executive ethics focus on maximizing shareholder value, while individual incentives, on personal returns. If I can pollute a lake for an extra buck to my stock price, I'm expected to do this.
* HR ethics focus on protecting the company. If they can lie to you as an employee to minimize legal risk, that's what's gonna happen.
* Legal ethics focusing on protecting your client (no matter how evil), while practice focuses on maximizing billable hours.
... and so on. It's not good or bad. It just is. As a programmer, you'll be off-putting to people from those groups for reasons just as valid or invalid.
And generalizations are often accurate. If you don't show a certain modesty and humility in gift-receiving in China, you'll be an outcast. If you don't show a certain opulence and over-the-top gratitude in some parts of the Middle East and show the same, you'll be an outcast just as much.
Guess what happens when the two cultures come together?
People are viewed as jerks.
A little cross-cultural training goes a long ways to avoid that. I'm sorry you don't like the tone, but I viewed this as a fair guide for programmers managing corporate settings running into those barriers. This article appears to do a fine job explaining HR's role to people coming from e.g. CS undergrad degrees which will prevent them from getting hurt. It's no better or worse than a guide for e.g. American women as to what to expect if they marry someone from Saudi culture.
As a footnote, quotation marks suggest you're quoting someone. Your claimed quote doesn't exist in the source article. Your point would be stronger if you commented on what the author wrote than your (somewhat inaccurate) read-between-the-lines. That's another place cultures differ a lot: how things are implied and subtexts. People misread subtexts, which I think you did here.