The issue here is that I'm making a significant investment (both time and potentially money) in what sounds like quite a long shot. You're casually open to a ne

The issue here is that I'm making a significant investment (both time and potentially money) in what sounds like quite a long shot. You're casually open to a new opportunity but that sounds like I've only got a relatively limited chance of landing you (and that's on top of us deciding you're a good candidate for us). You say that the ROI doesn't work for you, but the chances are those odds mean it doesn't work for the company either (we could invest the time and money in the interview and still not land you - that's always a possibility but here it sounds pretty likely). In all honesty it sounds like the right thing in these situations isn't to pay money, it's to either find a more efficient way to work out whether it's a good match (so that a long interview was either unnecessary or something the candidate was willing to do) or for both parties to walk away and look for a better way to spend their time. Just to be clear, it's not that I don't value the developers time, I absolutely do, it's just that I think handing over money in this situation (a) may work for the developer but doesn't for the company and (b) rather muddies the water.