The "NYT view" was a crude stereotype of the tech industry and the stereotypical male nerd tech worker, introduced to justify the article's position that the tech industry is male-dominated and sexist. There's plenty wrong with it.

And as a matter of fact, the contributions of men did heavily outweigh the contributions of women because women at the time were NOT ALLOWED to become engineers in most of the United States. In the rare places where it was allowed, high school advisors discouraged women from going to college and college advisors discouraged women from taking advanced math. Society was generally sexist and the potential for women to contribute was suppressed.

In the tech industry, women were allowed to become computer operators because it was seen as a natural progression from being typewriter operators, and because the tech industry was more progressive than the NYT gives it credit for. The heavy math, engineering, and design work was mostly done by men because, with rare exceptions like Hopper, they were the only ones with the skills and training to do it.