[josecodea]

I am sorry to hear that. It is high time that us engineers learn the lesson and refuse to work with any company that asks for unpaid work. There is no other way, but this only works if we are brave enough to act as activists, so that other engineers become aware of the abuse and circumvent it successfully.

The few that benefit from the abuse also benefit from keeping it hush hush. This is no different from obscuring the pay-bands for employees so that they can get away with underpaying the most vulnerable workers.