Right, one is addressing a single person that's said they afraid of talking in public for fear of blowback and another is directed to the Bay Area and greater tech community asking them to engage the world.
That the blowback from tech employees is a real thing which directly contributes to lack of dialog between people with different political opinions, and not caring about the individual while imploring the community at large to engage is a ridiculous and contradictory position.
A pair of riots in Berkeley within a month, San Jose during the election, the Brendan Eich situation, myriad letters from CEOs post election. To quote sama's recent post [1], "Almost everyone I asked was willing to talk to me, but almost none of them wanted me to use their names—even people from very red states were worried about getting “targeted by those people in Silicon Valley if they knew I voted for him”. One person in Silicon Valley even asked me to sign a confidentiality agreement before she would talk to me, as she worried she’d lose her job if people at her company knew she was a strong Trump supporter."
Care as much or little about the concerns of people not like you as you want, just don't act like you want to have a conversation with them too in the same breath.
There is no contraction, engaging the world, especially those that may not agree with you, is potentially dangerous and if you're afraid to do so, then don't.
What am I missing?