Ask HN: Would you hire a dev who offers 1 day of work up front, no commitment?

7 codebytrial 10 6/4/2025, 4:51:10 AM

I’m a senior developer exploring a new way to cut through the noise of multi-stage interviews, unpaid take-home tests, and weeks of back-and-forth.

Instead of all that, here’s what I’m trying:

1. You give me a real task.

2. I work with you for one full day. For free.

3. At the end of the day, we decide if it makes sense to continue.

No upfront commitment. No strings. Just one day of actual work to evaluate fit.

If it’s a match, we talk about what’s next — freelance, contract, or full-time. If not, we part ways. Simple.

I'm wondering:

As a founder or hiring manager, would this lower friction or raise red flags?

As a dev, would you ever offer something like this?

Would a small landing page explaining this be enough, or does it need more proof/social signals?

Appreciate your honest takes — refining this before I go wider. (And if anyone’s curious to test it out, I’m around.)

Comments (10)

tobinfekkes · 2d ago

I do this in a couple of different businesses, except I pay them for their time. Why is an applicant's time less valuable than an employer's time? I guess because we worship business and labor and money? Or the hiring process innately means that the business has more leverage? I don't know. But I can think of a few ways that an applicant's time is actually more precious and scarce. Often times, if I treat an applicant's time as valuable, they won't waste mine either.

Rather than do interviews or tests, I get coffee with them first to suss it out, them bring them in to do the "actual job" I'm hiring for, and pay them $100 for their time. I'm not losing $100 because they did something useful, and I gained knowledge of their ability and work ethic, and they're not out a day's worth of work cause they got paid.

codebytrial · 2d ago

I should clarify — this isn't meant to undercut developer rates or normalize free work. It’s more of a signal: “I'm confident enough to put in a real day’s work before asking for anything in return.”

I’ve had great feedback on my past work, but getting through the hiring noise — especially as a solo dev — has felt increasingly broken. This felt like a cleaner alternative to long interview chains or speculative coding tests.

I’m especially interested in hearing from founders:

Does this help you move faster?

Or would you worry it’s too unconventional or even risky?

Totally open to pushback — I want to test the idea, not pitch it blindly.

vinibrito · 2d ago

I'm a generalist web dev, I do something similar if I'm confident that it will work. In fact, it's something I learned from someone who calls that the "briefcase technique". But for most pitches I don't, for the obvious reason of limited effort to apply to all.

P.S: when I'm on the hiring side, if all someone has to offer is free work then it doesn't help the person's pitch. That has happened, didn't help the candidates, they just weren't a good fit and free work wouldn't change that. I didn't engage in the free work offer.

But I say this because for the needs I had I could quickly filter for the skills I needed without lengthy interviews.

codebytrial · 2d ago

That’s a great point — if someone only offers free work without clear signals of fit, it probably won’t help.

I see this less as a value flex, and more as a trust accelerant — especially in cases where the work is exploratory, multi-layered, or where cultural fit really matters.

Totally agree this wouldn’t change much for “clear-cut” hires where a quick repo scan or question is enough. But when the match is more ambiguous — or when you're competing with a hundred devs on credentials alone — sometimes doing the work is the shortcut.

Appreciate your insight. Sounds like you've been on both sides of the table too.

mixmastamyk · 2d ago

I've tried this (limited to four hours) and haven't seen any additional traction. I think it might work with say, a small business owner looking to avoid waste, perhaps?

But the vast majority of tech jobs are gated by employees. Who've decided or been told that "everyone goes thru the process," (to avoid lemons). It's not their money they're wasting and therefore aren't particularly interested in snowflake distractions.

GianFabien · 2d ago

It would help if you could describe exactly what work you are competent to perform.

In the majority of businesses I worked for, you would have difficulty in even understanding the requirements in a day. It is not just about your technical skills. In my experience, domain specific knowledge and expertise is absolutely essential.

codebytrial · 2d ago

Thanks, that’s a fair point.

To be more specific: I’m a senior full-stack developer with strong experience in React, React Native, Node.js, and TypeScript. I've also worked with Python for AI/ML integrations and backend scripting. My specialty lies in quickly understanding product needs, implementing robust UI/UX, and writing maintainable, production-ready code. I’ve shipped full apps from scratch and contributed to scaling production systems.

You’re right—domain-specific knowledge is crucial. My “one-day trial” offer is not about replacing deep context or long onboarding. It’s simply a fast way for someone to assess how I approach problems, how I write code, and how I communicate. It works best for teams who already have a clearly scoped, self-contained task in mind.

GianFabien · 20h ago

Thanks for the additional context.

You basically have two major filtering constraints:

    1. The potential client needs to have a dev env that aligns with your skill set.
    2. There needs to be a clear, sufficiently detailed specification of a module/component that can be realistically completed in a day.

As I see it, you have a challenge in identifying opportunities that meet the criteria where you are able to demonstrate the value of your services in a day. Perhaps you have a network of contacts that allows you to do that. That I cannot know.

Job ads might give you sufficient information about the first criteria, but the second one is much harder to discern. I dread that you could end up having lots of meetings where the hiring manager obfuscates the quality of the requirements specifications. At least that has been my experience.

Pardon my cynicism. In my rather extensive experience, my first task was almost always to determine what needs to be done and why. Only then could I actually work on the implementation. Even when there was a spec to work from, it generally was in the form that the management had signed off on it as being complete, yet the developers were constantly asking for clarification and additional details.

Perhaps the foregoing is more of a rant. Sorry about that. Hope you have far better luck than my past experiences suggest.

elmerfud · 2d ago

For me, no. On the surface it might make sense, but just no. I want someone who values their time, their skills and they know their value. Offering to work for free, for a for profit company, shows me you don't value your skills and assign worth to them.

If you want to demonstrate your skills in a volunteer way, there are lots of open source projects that lack attention. Show me what you can do there, fix an outstanding issue or at least toss up a PR so I can see your work, if you're able to adhere to the projects guidelines etc... and you'll be contributing to something that benefits everyone.

I despise lengthy coding interviews, and this idea of working for a day for nothing... Any company that would do that is a big red flag. If they have a minor task that can be completed in a day or two without full onboarding then they can pay for that limited amount of time as well. As much as a prospective employee should want to demonstrate their work ethic, and employer should want you demonstrate how it values the time and skills of their workers... They do that not with pats on the back or pizza parties, they do it with money.

codebytrial · 2d ago

That’s a fair and valuable perspective — and I agree: in most cases, devs shouldn’t work for free, especially when the company holds all the leverage.

I probably should’ve framed it better: this isn’t meant to say “my time has no value.” It’s a strategic offer, one I can afford to make selectively, to bypass hiring theater and move fast with teams I genuinely want to work with.

It’s not scalable, and I’m not asking every company to do it. It’s also not for test builds or code screens — it’s for real work, with real stakes. And yes, if it leads to continued work, it’s paid at full rate or better.

I think of it less as “free labor” and more as “earned trust through action”, with a sharp boundary: if it’s not a fit, we part ways after a day. If it is, we both win.

I appreciate your pushback — seriously. Framing matters, and you’re right to highlight what gets lost when “free” becomes the default.