Paid Mentorship and Referrals: A Discussion On Desperation, Greed, And Ethics
Should You Even Try To Commoditize Them?
Every now and then, my Twitter feed explodes with a fiasco related to Topmate, a platform that allows people to list paid consulting and mentorship services. Recently, I noticed yet another wave of criticism towards this platform when a certain early-career engineer at Google posted a tweet about a list of thousands of HR professionals willing to refer people for jobs, which happened to be a promotion for Topmate.
In the past, I have defended Topmate for enabling people to get fairly compensated for their efforts. However, over time, I’ve realized there is far more nuance to this discussion, which goes beyond charging money for offering your time. Therefore, in this newsletter issue, we will discuss the ethicality of paid mentorship and referrals.
A few disclaimers
Before we start this discussion, I have a few disclaimers I’d like to share:
I don’t oppose anyone from promoting content for a brand (what triggered this recent fiasco on Twitter). In the past, I have collaborated with companies such as Wix.com, Warp, and Commvault, and I stand by every one of those promotions. However, I recommend that people evaluate the consequences of certain promotions before agreeing to them.
I don’t have an issue with anyone seeking compensation for their time and effort, even if it is just a video call. It allows any such positive efforts to be sustainable.
This article is not a hit job on Topmate. It intends to discuss the behaviours of service providers and consumers on the platform; however, it may mention specific actions the company has taken and potential consequences.
This issue is focused on tech professionals and software engineers, not professionals from other fields. I don’t have the knowledge or insight to comment on any other industry and will not be doing so.
What exactly is the problem?
One of the biggest concerns with Topmate is that it lets just about anyone list mentorship services without any checks or verification. Because most people buying sessions are early-career folks looking for guidance, the platform has slowly turned into a fish market of advice. Most of what’s being sold is painfully generic: resume tips, DSA prep, how to speak confidently in interviews, stuff you can easily find for free online.
The truth is that for early-career professionals, the tech industry has fairly well-defined and standard entryways. If you’re aiming for companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Infosys, TCS, etc., the path to getting there is pretty well documented. There’s already more than enough content out there to guide you through it. So the value of what you’re buying is already questionable at best.
However, this leads me to another question altogether.
Are people THAT desperate for mentorship and referrals?
The simple answer is YES! But the reasons for that are far from simple.
This story of desperation starts with privilege. Not the overt, flashy kind, but the quiet kind, like growing up in a household where English was spoken fluently, having access to a computer and stable internet from a young age, or being encouraged to explore interests without worrying about survival. These privileges shape our paths long before we enter the job market. They define the headstarts we receive in life, whether we start 15 metres ahead or 20 metres behind in a 100 metre race.
Then comes social media. LinkedIn is a relentless stream of positivity porn, focused on wins such as new jobs, big announcements, and course completions, without a note on late nights, rejections, and self-doubt. It’s a broadcast signal defining what jobs and accomplishments define success in the world today. As humans, most of us long for acceptance, attention, and praise. Slowly, FOMO creeps in; not just fear of missing out but, even more so, fear of being left behind.
In that environment, anything that promises a leg up, a mentor call, a referral, a connection, starts to feel like salvation. Platforms like Topmate tap into that hunger. And in the process, the line between guidance and grift begins to blur.
Did “career” influencers help with this problem?
Unfortunately, this world is not the nicest place out there. When someone understands just how desperate people can be, how deeply they crave a breakthrough, a referral, a way out, and then chooses to play with that desperation for personal gain, the outcome is rarely ethical. It’s manipulative, exploitative, and often disguised as “help.”
And then, of course, we have the rise of the career influencer in tech. Not people who talk deeply about a particular technical domain, but folks who build an entire brand around job offers, interview wins, and motivational one-liners. Now, this in itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I am friends with influencers like Arsh Goyal and Kushal Vijay, who have done wonders for the student community, and I greatly respect that. However, seeing the success of these influencers, others start to mimic their approach, turning personal wins into performances.
And when they begin selling calls on Topmate, they create the illusion that they’ve discovered some secret formula for success. In reality, it’s often just the same advice in a fancier wrapper, now tied to a price tag.
Greed ruins all good things.
It always starts with a noble intention and ends with a slow decay, the kind you don’t notice until the rot has already settled in.
I took a stroll through Topmate’s marketplace, and what I found was rather unsettling. A growing number of individuals were openly charging money for referrals. Not resume reviews or career guidance, referrals!
Even when the minimum price is minimal (₹10, ₹50, ₹100, or even nothing), the idea that you could “book” a referral like a haircut feels wrong. It turns what’s supposed to be a personal endorsement into a commodity. And if it can be bought, it can and will be gamed. Unintentionally or not, Topmate is enabling this with their “Pay what you like” feature.
Hypothetically, I could pay ₹10,000 for a referral instead of the set minimum of ₹10, potentially disincentivizing a referrer from internally pushing for better candidates in my favor, because I paid them more. In the worst-case scenario, this would enable people to bribe their way into jobs they don’t deserve.
Referrals were never meant to be a service. They’ve always been a quiet signal of trust, that someone within a company is willing to put their name behind you because they believe you’re genuinely a good fit. It’s not just a professional courtesy; it’s a personal gesture. But when referrals become something you can buy, that trust begins to fade. The meaning behind the act is lost, and the system that once relied on integrity starts to unravel. What was once “I believe in this person” slowly turns into “someone paid me to say this,” and that changes everything.
Is paid mentorship even ethical?
Mentorship was never meant to be a one-hour call with a stranger. It is a relationship built on context, trust, and a shared investment in someone’s growth. Good mentorship is not just about giving advice. It is about listening, understanding, and offering direction that fits the person before you, not a generic blueprint. That kind of depth takes time. It cannot be rushed, and it definitely cannot be packaged into a booking link.
This isn’t a dig at services like mock interviews, resume reviews, or portfolio feedback. Those can be genuinely helpful, especially when offered by someone who knows what they’re doing. If someone’s putting in time and effort to give you specific, actionable feedback, it makes sense for that to be a paid service. The issue isn’t with those sessions, it’s with how mentorship itself is being packaged and sold, stripped of context and care, and pitched as some kind of guaranteed shortcut to success (which it isn’t!)
Concluding thoughts
At the end of the day, this isn’t about blaming one platform or calling out individuals. It’s about recognizing that vulnerability, which when left unchecked, becomes a business opportunity (and not in a good way). Topmate may have started with good intentions, but even well-meaning systems can spiral into something exploitative without guardrails. When mentorship and referrals become products, they lose the trust and care that gave them value in the first place.
If you’re offering help, do it with honesty. If you’re seeking it, ask whether what you’re paying for is something you genuinely need or whether it’s just something you’ve been made to believe you’re missing.
There are no shortcuts to a meaningful career. Just the work, the people who walk with you, and the lessons you pick up along the way.
This is written so well and talks exactly about these platforms and the issues with them. The part where it talks about mentorship being built on trust, that does strike a chord as I have had mentors in my current workplace and the kind of mentorship I get from them can never be possible through these paid 1:1 calls that are not built on any mutual relationship and trust. A good write up as always 👏🏻
It's interesting how a simple tool that's a solution to scheduling calls and getting paid for your time has to figure out the ethical consequences now. Generally, that signals towards growth of a company. But with the Indian audience, a lot of that assumption falls apart.
I love how you reinforced the idea of what actual mentorship always has been. More than an exchange of money with one-way strangers. The mentor was invested in your growth.
It would be interesting to see if Topmate decides to solve this problem.