You completely missed the point of the article. Yes, he acted naively, and assumed that the company that he was working for would act in good faith. Thats not the point.
The point is that this is a terrible company that acted in bad faith, and took advantage of an admittedly naive person, and nobody in the developer community should ever trust Unbabel again because fuck them.
What is legal an what is right are two separate things. Yes, everything that the company did was legal. Everyone knows that. They still acted in bad faith, though. And this is going to come back to bite them as a developer would have to be crazy to work in that kind of toxic environment.
Obviously the employee made some mistakes, he even admits to this. Thats not the point. The point is that Unbabel acted horribly to its employee and acted in bad faith pretty much ever step along the way.
People keep thinking this situation should be about contracts and lawyers and staying silent to help his case in a lawsuit or something. The employee know full well that he is never going to get fully paid for the contract. So he decided to let other people know how bad this company is so others can know about it. This is the best way to punish a company that acts in bad faith.
What world is this article living in? I got a job making $100k as a software engineer, right out of college (top-tier I guess). And then I realized that I was worth more than that, and 8 months later I'm now switching over to a job making $150k in total compensation. And TBH, I was middle of the road compared to my classmates.
The point is that this is a terrible company that acted in bad faith, and took advantage of an admittedly naive person, and nobody in the developer community should ever trust Unbabel again because fuck them.