A senior engineer with Big Four experience spends an entire weekend building a production-ready prototype. Another invests two days crafting a detailed AI transformation roadmap for a company’s “assessment.” The outcome? Not job offers, but radio silence, budget reversals, and a sinking realization that their unpaid labor just became someone else’s intellectual property.
This isn’t a glitch in the hiring matrix. It’s a feature, and it’s spreading.
When “Assessments” Become Unpaid Consulting Gigs
The pattern is depressingly consistent. A recent Times of India investigation documented how an Ahmedabad-based firm seeking to “pivot to AI” asked a senior candidate to deliver a complete 12-24 month transformation strategy, including competitor analysis and product expansion plans. After submitting the work, the candidate learned the position’s budget had mysteriously shrunk below their previously-discussed salary expectations.
The exploitation is particularly acute for senior roles where evaluation criteria like “what you can build” become vehicles for extracting strategic work. Once shared, candidates have zero control over how that IP is used. The company gets free consulting, the engineer gets a form rejection.
The Bait-and-Switch Playbook
The mechanics of this trap follow a predictable script:
- The “Quick Prototype” Promise: Recruiters frame assignments as “2-3 hour tasks” that “don’t need to be perfect”
- The Scope Creep: Actual requirements demand production-grade code, cloud infrastructure, and board-ready presentations
- The Time Sink: Engineers report spending 16-40 hours on “brief” assessments
- The Ghosting: After submission, communication evaporates or feedback is vague and non-actionable
- The IP Disappearance: Your architecture decisions, code patterns, and strategic frameworks become their internal documentation
One senior engineer on Reddit described spending two full days on a “prototype” that was supposed to take “a few hours.” The company’s feedback? “Not at the level they expected” and requiring “more work”, despite the candidate explicitly documenting what they’d accomplish with additional time. The kicker: the assignment would have required paid cloud resources to complete properly.
Why Senior Engineers Are Prime Targets
This isn’t about junior developers struggling with algorithm trivia. Senior engineers face a unique vulnerability: their expertise is precisely what makes them valuable, and exploitable.
Companies hiring for leadership positions want to see “vision” and “strategic thinking.” That’s code for: “Give us your best ideas before we commit to paying you.” A senior engineer’s assessment might involve:
- Architecting a complete system migration strategy
- Designing a multi-quarter product roadmap
- Building a functional MVP with CI/CD pipelines
- Presenting to a 6-person panel of stakeholders
The sunk cost fallacy kicks in hard. After investing 20 hours, the thought of walking away feels like wasting that time, even when every instinct screams that you’re being played.
The AI Twist: Making Bad Practices Worse
Here’s where it gets interesting for AI enthusiasts. Some commenters noted that take-home assignments are “disappearing because of LLMs”, the theory being that candidates will just have AI do the work. But the reality is more cynical: AI is enabling more sophisticated exploitation.
Companies now ask candidates to:
– Explain their AI-assisted workflow (documenting their process for free)
– Build AI-powered prototypes (delivering both code and prompt engineering strategies)
– Design AI transformation roadmaps (giving away their most valuable strategic thinking)
The irony? These same companies fear candidates using AI to complete assignments, yet they’re perfectly happy extracting AI expertise without compensation. It’s a one-way street where they reap the benefits of your AI literacy while questioning your authenticity.
The Legal Gray Zone (That’s Actually Pretty Black)
While employment law is clear that off-the-clock work is illegal, hiring assessments occupy a murky space. Candidates aren’t employees, so standard wage protections don’t apply. But when assignments require:
– 20+ hours of specialized labor
– Production-ready deliverables
– Strategic IP that directly benefits the company
…the line between “assessment” and “unpaid consulting” becomes legally questionable. The problem is enforcement. Who’s going to sue over a weekend’s worth of work when the legal fees would exceed the “lost wages”?
The Power Dynamics Problem
The fundamental issue is asymmetry. Companies hold all the cards: the job, the decision-making power, and the candidate’s sunk time. Engineers, especially those currently employed, face a brutal calculation: invest unpaid time or be labeled “not committed enough.”
One parent in the Reddit thread captured this perfectly: “I will spend maximum 2h on it and can explain how I would tackle the rest during the panel. If it does not work out given 2h, I tell them that I believe they value candidates having free time over candidates having skills.”
This is the only sane response, yet it requires privilege, either financial security or current employment, to execute. Junior engineers and those desperate for a job can’t afford to walk away.
A Better Model: What Ethical Companies Do
The best companies have already solved this. Their approaches include:
- Time-Boxed Live Sessions: Give candidates a real problem, 90 minutes, and access to their AI tools of choice. Watch them think, debug, and collaborate in real-time. This reveals far more about actual performance than polished take-home code.
- Paid Assignments: Offer $1,500-$3,000 for a 2-day project. This signals respect and ensures only serious candidates apply. It’s still cheaper than a recruiter’s commission.
- Portfolio Reviews: For senior engineers, existing open-source work, architecture documents, or technical blog posts provide better signal than artificial exercises.
- Reverse Engineering: Give candidates your actual code (sanitized) and ask them to review it. This tests real skills without asking for free labor.
The Candidate’s Playbook: How to Fight Back
If you’re currently job searching, here are concrete strategies:
- Set Hard Boundaries: “I’m happy to spend 2-3 hours on a design document, but I don’t do unpaid implementation work.” Frame it as a professional standard, not personal preference.
- Ask Directly: “How is this assignment used after submission? Will it inform actual product decisions?” Their answer reveals whether it’s an assessment or a fishing expedition.
- Watermark Everything: Add clear “For Assessment Purposes Only” markers to all deliverables. It’s not legal protection, but it signals you’re aware of the game.
- Invoice for Your Time: After a rejection, send a professional invoice for your hours at market rate. You won’t get paid, but it creates a paper trail and signals that you know your worth. One engineer reported this triggered an immediate callback, though not with an offer.
- Name and Shame: Publicly document exploitative processes. The Reddit thread itself is a form of collective action. Transparency is your only leverage.
The Industry-Wide Implications
This isn’t just about individual candidates getting screwed. When exploitation becomes normalized, it:
- Devalues all engineering labor: If companies can get strategy for free, why pay for it?
- Excludes caregivers and diverse candidates: Only those with abundant free time can compete
- Corrupts hiring signals: The best candidates refuse to play, leaving companies with the desperate and naive
- Stifles innovation: Engineers waste time on fake projects instead of building real value
The Bottom Line
The take-home assignment trap persists because it works. For every senior engineer who walks away, ten desperate candidates will invest the time. But the market is shifting. In a world where AI can generate code and strategy in minutes, the value proposition of “prove you can build this for free” collapses.
The companies that win the talent war won’t be those with the most clever extraction mechanisms. They’ll be the ones who respect candidates’ time, pay for real work, and evaluate skills in ways that don’t require unpaid labor.
Until then, the best response remains the simplest: Just say no. Your time has value. Act like it.
What’s your take? Have you experienced exploitative take-home assignments? How did you handle it? The conversation is already shifting, senior engineers are collectively refusing to play along. That collective action is the only thing that will end this practice for good.
