> in hopes of either a significant payoff or at least experience that will anyways lead
You're moving the goalposts. It's not about whether they have equivalent opportunities, it's about whether they're slaves. The overworked-and-sleeping-on-a-mat-programmer and the overworked-and-sleeping-on-mat-maid may both simply have paid jobs with shitty bosses. People here are jumping to the conclusion that being worked hard + sleeping on a mat = slavery, when clearly it doesn't.
> I think there might be some conflation between this story and the article posted.
Yeah. My sense is people are angry at what the OP described, and their anger has clouded their judgment. They're twisting ambiguous stories like lordnacho's into a version of the OP's, so they can play-act their sense of righteous superiority.
> You understand that you are now complicit in her abuse, yes? You understand that you are an accomplice to this crime?
FFS, you literally know next to nothing about the situation. Why do you feel like you're in a position to self righteously adjudicate him as being a criminal? None of us, not even lordnacho himself, know enough about his friend's housekeeper to legitimately make claims like that (or casually throw around terms like slave).
Seriously, the housekeeper's situation may not be too far off from the archetypal startup employee working 18 hour days and sleeping under his desk. None of us know, and none of us should claim to know.
You're moving the goalposts. It's not about whether they have equivalent opportunities, it's about whether they're slaves. The overworked-and-sleeping-on-a-mat-programmer and the overworked-and-sleeping-on-mat-maid may both simply have paid jobs with shitty bosses. People here are jumping to the conclusion that being worked hard + sleeping on a mat = slavery, when clearly it doesn't.