Had an initial discussion via LinkedIn as I was reached out to directly. Somehow during handing off my resume and a few days passing, texting became the primary method of communication? Initially I thought it was a scam, as you know, we are in 2025 and texts are not trustworthy. However, it did end up being the recruiter. In my first interview screen with the recruiter, I made it abundantly clear that I only wanted to pursue this position if the base salary was where I needed it to be. I even doubled down and said, please do not push me forward if we cannot get to this number. Long story short, I did a total of 4 different interviews + 1 assessment (4-6 hours of personal time) (screen, manager discussion, presentation on the assessment, and VP or CTO discussion). In total i probably spent 8ish hours on this interview cycle. After my 1.5 hours of discussions and the presentation walkthrough, the next day I just get a text saying "oh yeah, we can't pay you that much". I mean.... what is the point of going through all of those hoops when in the very initial call i clearly stated that we shouldn't waste my/their teams time on this if it wasn't in the cards. Very inefficient. My personal time is wasted and about 6 hours of their teams time (mind you, they stated they are super under water on their list of items they need help with) on all these interviews that could have just been avoided. Pretty wild to me. At least after I shared my frustrations, the recruiter did respond with a nice note acknowledging my frustration. However, overall just not a good interview experience.