The purpose of an analogy is to short-circuit a long explanation by appealing to an already deeply understood concept. It's important to understand how the referenced concepts are understood and experienced by the audience if it's going to be an effective analogy. Comparisons to how the concept could technically be defined in a dry academic context are a bit irrelevant, since the whole point is to trigger a flash of intuition. Anyone who's reaction is "no, that's no the way you were supposed to experience that analogy" should probably not being using analogies to convey anything at all.
Using a trauma that you haven't experienced as a point of reference can also be seen as minimizing that trauma. Especially if you're going for a purposefully extreme juxtaposition like "being at the very top of a business with control over other people's labor and livelihoods is just like being a slave."
Because it's nothing like that at all to someone with deeper experience with the subject, and is as false to them as other shocking juxtapositions like "stubbing your toe is like having your entire family murdered in the holocaust (because they both hurt!)" or "needing to have a license to operate a car is like being gangraped (because you don't want either!)." Those kinds of analogies can be interpreted as purposefully trivializing and mocking that trauma, because there are quite a few people out there who really enjoy doing that sort of thing.
So when language is used like that, people who are hurt by the reference have to decide whether the speaker is simply ignorant of how it's going to land or if they are doing it on purpose. Some of them are going to chuck Hanlon's razor out the window and assume it's done on purpose as part of some sort of power game or sadism.
Since we're talking context here, I think it might be important to assess the various possible contexts:
- recent historical labor slavery (predominantly but not exclusively race based, US focus)
- modern labor slavery (less common in the US than other parts of the world)
- sex slavery (with a debate over when sex work counts)
- "wage slavery": being in a position where you must work to sustain yourself, without an expectation of receiving compensation based on the value you create
Wage slavery is not an uncommon phrase, and you see it bandied about on HN semi-regularly, especially whenever the topic of universal basic income comes up.
I would peg wage slavery as the closest context for analogy, though it's not perfect; in this case, the startup CEO is working predominantly for equity in the hopes that the equity will eventually be worth more than if they had taken a standard salary.
Using a trauma that you haven't experienced as a point of reference can also be seen as minimizing that trauma. Especially if you're going for a purposefully extreme juxtaposition like "being at the very top of a business with control over other people's labor and livelihoods is just like being a slave."
Because it's nothing like that at all to someone with deeper experience with the subject, and is as false to them as other shocking juxtapositions like "stubbing your toe is like having your entire family murdered in the holocaust (because they both hurt!)" or "needing to have a license to operate a car is like being gangraped (because you don't want either!)." Those kinds of analogies can be interpreted as purposefully trivializing and mocking that trauma, because there are quite a few people out there who really enjoy doing that sort of thing.
So when language is used like that, people who are hurt by the reference have to decide whether the speaker is simply ignorant of how it's going to land or if they are doing it on purpose. Some of them are going to chuck Hanlon's razor out the window and assume it's done on purpose as part of some sort of power game or sadism.