"After I was done They relocated me to a tiny basement room and kept 'forgetting' to give me any new tasks until I quit out of boredom."
That sounds like a reward to me. If it weren't for the ethical cost you mention in the rest of your post, I'd take that job in a heartbeat.
If someone wants to pay me for doing nothing, I can find plenty of things that interest me to do on their time.
On the other hand, I guess "doing nothing" doesn't look too great on your resume. And if you don't learn new skills or work with new tech, that would cost you in the long run. But I could at least work on some open source projects or learn a new language or something. That way I could have something to show for my time, and have fun as well.
This was way long ago, prior to the existence of web browsers. I suppose I could have just gone to work and read a book but it was literally a hard chair in a broom cupboard and a 'desk' that was barely big enough to hold a monitor and keyboard. There's a limit to how much fun you can have with only a copy of Excel 3.0, especially when I could do the same thing in greater comfort at home.
That sounds like a reward to me. If it weren't for the ethical cost you mention in the rest of your post, I'd take that job in a heartbeat.
If someone wants to pay me for doing nothing, I can find plenty of things that interest me to do on their time.
On the other hand, I guess "doing nothing" doesn't look too great on your resume. And if you don't learn new skills or work with new tech, that would cost you in the long run. But I could at least work on some open source projects or learn a new language or something. That way I could have something to show for my time, and have fun as well.