[dragonwriter]

> This advice is completely ignorant of other forces outside of the hiring managers' control.

The advice is from a CEO, presumably to CEOs (whose set of concerns include longer range strategic goals, and whose tools are broader, than those who are merely "hiring managers".)

> For example, women only account for ~12% of the graduates in computer science and computer engineering.

People who are qualified to work as computer programmers are not exclusively graduates in computer science and computer engineering. I'd be surprised if even the majority of working programmers had degrees in one of those fields.