He started charging companies $500 for take-home assignments. Half of them disappeared immediately.

A developer on r/interviewhammer shared a new personal policy: any take-home assignment estimated to take longer than three hours now carries a $500 flat fee, payable upfront. The results were immediate and clarifying. Roughly half of companies ended the process on the spot. The other half paid — and treated him with noticeably more respect throughout the remaining rounds. "Once I stopped acting desperate and stopped feeling like I had something to prove, recruiters and hiring managers began treating me differently," he wrote. Fellow Redditors called it the "best filter ever" and several reported adopting the same approach. One noted that the companies willing to pay were also the ones with the most reasonable overall processes.