I think the ‘free work’ idea is just a misapplication of a trend from another context. It’s a relatively recent thing to call out unpaid work on social media.

I think the ‘free work’ idea is just a misapplication of a trend from another context. It’s a relatively recent thing to call out unpaid work on social media. The bar that runs entirely on trial shifts. The media giant running unpaid internships. In those cases the work really is valuable to the business. You can do bar work or proofreading at close to the output of an experienced person right off the bat. So those are rightly called out when abused. On the other hand, the idea that you’re gonna come to an established engineering or product team with novel and valuable new insights, after a random Saturday of you thinking about it, is patently silly.