The assignment arrived with a deadline: Sunday, 2 PM. Submit it as a presentation, a document, or a spreadsheet. Then the recruiter added a question, and then another — all before any interview had been offered.
The candidate had a portfolio. She told the recruiter so: her skills were already there to review, demonstrated, finished. If the company wanted her time, skill, and effort put into new work, she said, she expected to be paid for it — especially if she was not hired.
When she asked for the assignment to be paid, the company’s founder called her personally. His argument, as she relayed it, was that the business was large: “with absolute audacity, we’re running a business of crores” — as if scale settled whether her work was worth money.
She posted the exchange and asked why the size of a company should excuse it from valuing the work it asks for. The comments split the way the market does. One phrase surfaced again and again to defend the practice: “beggars can’t be choosers.”