Never work for free. It increases the exploitation of less experienced developers, it drives salaries down. It's actually illegal in most states not to pay you

Never work for free. It increases the exploitation of less experienced developers, it drives salaries down. It's actually illegal in most states not to pay you at least the minimum wage. If you really can't find any jobs (which I find very hard to believe), write some useful app. It's usually more than enough to show during the interview. In fact, when we interviewed developers, we strongly preferred the ones with personal projects.