I guess I didn't make what I had in mind more clear, as I didn't finish "if they can do the work of 3 days (or a week or three weeks, or 'unusable') of one of t

I guess I didn't make what I had in mind more clear, as I didn't finish "if they can do the work of 3 days (or a week or three weeks, or 'unusable') of one of the 'other' devs" correctly." I meant, "in a day". What I really had in mind is about a day's work, like an extended interview, but paid. Basically, someone saying, "Look, I don't know how to tell a hadoop expert from someone who can only code bad html and bad php", so instead of three unpaid interviews before you land your next job, how about one 8-hour paid interview (320 dollars). If you're what I'm looking for I'll hire you on the spot, but if you're just full of BS like the last three guys I couldn't tell were BS artists, when I'll just have to make do with a tiny bit of progress. My point was, interviews are also an opportunity cost, and that not being able to tell apart bad php coders from awesome database engineers is also an opportunity cost. Also I don't know what market you have in mind, but 40 dollars an hour is more than what someone who just does some html and php badly (i.e. couldn't complete fizzbuzz) is worth in almost every city. That would be 80k per year salary. I think the point is to bridge the gap between "completely unpaid interview" and "I have to pay you 100 dollars an hour for a week". How about an 8-hour or 4-hour "free trial" before I take you on full-time at 200k per year? Only instead of actually free, I'll actually pay you 320 dollars for your audition. Seems like this beats the hell out of doing two or three unpaid interviews...