These bits resonated with me more than I had expected. The declaration "life is not like high school" is only partially true. College offers a temporary respite since are significantly more likely to be around people with a distinct interest in building things and learning things, in an environment where the "politics" are somewhat restrained.
... But afterwards, back in the "Real World", some of the same high-school factors return, as you see an increase in the social and financial predators, parasites, and empire-builders.
> We don’t always live up to this value as well as we should[...] In our ideal world, though, your identity and personal history are orthogonal to your commit history.
To use an analogy, this is like the ideals of "rule of law" or "freedom of speech" in various countries. Even when there are chronic violations in practice, it's still hugely important and valuable that the culture still holds it up as a goal. Even among two nations equally authoritarian in practice, the one where the population all knows and recites the social-mores of democracy is much much better-off and more likely to achieve them.
The creation and maintenance of a widely-believed idea (especially one which is sometimes inconvenient to individuals and institutions) represents an enormous and ongoing investment in collective effort and willpower.
The fact that we even have a collective shared-ideal of "we judge you by your work" is an achievement worth celebrating and continuing, even if we individually fail at it, or even fail at it a lot.