As a Bay Area native who moved to Abu Dhabi / Dubai roughly four years ago, I have a lot of issues with the way the UAE is portrayed across sites like Hacker News and Reddit. A lot of them are in the comments for this story, focusing on all the negatives of the country, structural racism, human rights abuse, etc and we certainly have a right to raise these things (of which I actively fight against here every day). That being said however, this young country does also have many positives to it that go unnoticed by those across the world since they're rarely reported. They may be small, but they are accomplishments nonetheless, such as a couple years ago being the "Year of Tolerance" where the gov't focused on bring inclusivity in their own way to the country, or bringing the Pope to this country on his first ever visit to the Gulf, or even the religious centers that are being built in Abu Dhabi that celebrate Jewish, Muslim and Christian history. For a country hardly 50 years old, it's come a long way. Just this year, a lot of laws such as having children out of wedlock, marijuana / alcohol, not requiring a local partner for business, etc., have all been relaxed and this is just the beginning. They've also introduced a variety of labor laws (though I don't think they're being followed by the owners of these companies, but that's a qualm for another day)
I don't want to get across that this country is good or bad, but that it's _complex_ (just like most countries). I do personally believe that the leadership of the country is trying to make a positive impact, though it's usually in ways that aren't reported in the media and... that's all I want put out there, just to bring some nuance to the conversation.
Having said all that, going back to the long-form article, I will say only one thing, debt is something that's really scary to have here since AFAIK, it's illegal in Islam, so the credit card system tends to be strangely designed and if I was ever in debt to this country or any of these Arab countries, I'd stay far away from here.