Well done for standing your ground, Sonya. I think a lot of people feel the pressure to do free work to 'get on the ladder'. I actually managed to get my current job by working for free - except it was for myself. I had a prolonged spell of unemployment and the odd bit of precarious employment. During that time, I did a lot of content creation on LinkedIn and wrote Medium stories. After a few months, it got me noticed, and I've never looked back. Do internships count as 'free work'? I feel that fancy titles obfuscate what is really going on. Companies will often use excuses and pretexts to secure free labour.