> <i>2: Gift cards as an incentive aren't always bad. It's when they're confusing your personal vs. professional roles. For example, if a company reaches out offering a gift card in exchange for a personal G2 review or as part of a research initiative, I don't see a conflict there.</i><p>Even the "personal" outreaches, such as market research to poll you as a subject matter expert, no mention of your employer... might actually be to try to milk you for information about your employer.<p>It could be on behalf of competitors of the company, and it could also be on behalf of prospective investors in the company.<p>Just say no to anyone offering to pay you for a call like that.<p>However, they can be even more evil, and harder to weed out: rather than some market research pretext, they can pretend to approach you as a recruiter.