Post by Crossover

Let's cut the bull$hit. Yes, some companies use hiring as a free consulting pipeline. They want live campaigns, real strategies, working code, and decks they can hand straight to clients. Then they disappear. You should call it out every time. I'll join you. But "never do unpaid work" isn't the brave career advice it sounds like on LinkedIn. It's just really lazy advice. Before you grab the pitchforks, can we actually talk about it? When 3,000 people apply for one high-paying remote role, what's a fair company supposed to do? Hire whoever tells the best story, or trust a gut read in a 30-minute call? Astrology? Scale is exactly why you filter hard. It doesn't mean you get to skip proof entirely. At Crossover, most people who enter the interview pipeline exit at step 1 or 2 of 5: either the 15- to 20-minute screening interview or the 15-minute cognitive aptitude test. Step 3 is where the work sample comes in. By the time you're showing real work, you're one of a handful of serious contenders, not applicant #2,847 getting blindsided by a weekend project. The work is representative, never a live brief. And we publish the pay for every single job we post. So, should the question of skill tests be "paid or unpaid" or "fair or exploitative"? Because they're not the same. Fair work comes late, after the filtering, with a clear boundary: the company can't actually ship it after rejecting you. Exploitative work is the opposite: a vague ask blasted to everyone upfront, usable output handed over for free, no pay transparency, and then radio silence. We're all gonna have to learn to tell the difference. Compete hard where it's fair. Walk without guilt when it isn't. Or don't. You do you. :)