Thanks for putting it like this, the numbers took me by surprise. During my university years (a bit over a decade ago), I actually applied for an internship at Microsoft, and they definitely spent more than $1k flying me from Poland to UK and back for an on-site interview. I wasn't that good, my university isn't that good either, surely they could've used that money to incentivize a few local candidates with free Xboxes and come out ahead. Makes me wonder why they bothered with interns from distant lands in the first place. Tech recruitment never made sense to me (though I enjoyed benefiting from its peculiarities).
