For my next job, I've thought about offering to work for free for a week or so as a kind of mutual trial period. I want to know what the entire office is like, what the codebase is like, what the tools are like, and what actually needs to be done. If they want to rip me off and get a week of free work, great! That's exactly the kind of thing I would want to know about a company upfront. And after that week, they should know the degree to which I'm a fraud and be excited to pay me commensurately.

I know this wouldn't work for most potential employees since they don't quit their jobs until they have another one, but I always take a few months between jobs. I wonder how I might actually be able to pull this off..