I think the expectation is that any travel is paid for by the company. I've even had a per diem given to me to pay for meals as well.

That was always the norm for me.

Not candidates for a position I'm hiring for, no.

But positions that I'm applying to? I'm senior enough now that if I can't negotiate a paid-travel interview, clearly I either don't care enough and should cross that opportunity off my list, or it's tempting enough that I don't care.

It's more about the reaction by obvious scammers.

What’s the scam? Get a job they can’t do…continue to get paid?

1 paycheck of just a few thousand dollars USD is a lot of money in other countries.

The scam is hold on to the job for at least 1 paycheck. It’s a expensive for companies to (legally) fire people, so if you get hired you typically can get at least a few grand even if you do zero work.

> It’s a expensive for companies to (legally) fire people

Maybe in Europe, in the US it's an email.

Due to the wealth disparities involved, a month’s Silicon Valley money is a years income for a scammer in a poor country.

So just produce LLM-level code, make excuses, say you’re learning the code base, get lots of help from colleagues, turn in mediocre work, and if you can hang on for three months before they fire you - that’s decent money!

Hell, you might even get promoted to management!

> So just produce LLM-level code, make excuses, say you’re learning the code base, get lots of help from colleagues, turn in mediocre work

If they switched from doing all this to pressing people for estimates.

Yep, with very little upfront cost needed.

You're talking about the entity trying to make people spend a nontrivial sum of money, time, and effort to get a job, right?