I stopped the conversation right there. That was a massive waste of time.
"Don't be showing up on the Ferrari dealership forecourt with a Honda budget in your pocket."
Did the interview, got an offer, and that offer was 70% less than what I was currently making. Turned the offer down.
When asked "why?" I responded "because you lied to me about the compensation. I have no interest in working for anyone that would immediately lie to me."
I will not talk to any company, and haven't for the past 15+ years, that cannot give me a very firm number in the first ten minutes. And I shut down the conversation immediately if they won't.
As I got older and more "adult" responsibilities started coming (mortgage, family planning), economic security became much more of a priority. More conventional things I learned about employee retention and organizational behavior started to make more sense where pay and time off were huge motivational factors. It's okay to be motivated by money.
It isn't always about the pay, but it is often about weeding out the people who would take advantage. There is cheap, and there is poor, and for some parts of my career I have confused the two.
Much like I won't pay for something just because it is expensive, but I will often pay for the more expensive option rather than the cheaper one. Expensive doesn't always mean good, but it is a differentiator and a signalling mechanism.
I use compensation as a litmus test to determine if someone is trying to take advantage of me. If the company is trying to low-ball me, that means to me, not that they are financially cheap (though some are, and you can smell them from as far away as the dog's dinner from two nights ago), but that they believe me to be naive and exploitable. I might be an immigrant, but it doesn't mean that I stepped off the boat yesterday.
Out of all the benefits and bonuses and culture that a company has, all of which can be taken away or changed in an eye blink (Activision's purchase of Blizzard for instance) for a variety of reasons, base compensation is exceptionally hard to hand wave away. Companies that don't pay well usually have crap culture, lousy benefits and work-life balance that truly sucks. Again, for me, compensation is a signalling mechanism.
If yes, then it was a dick move and you definitely dodged a bullet.
I'm asking because I know of some cases where the salary range was listed in the job posting, but after talking to the candidate, the company decided to offer them a number that was below the lower bound, saying that the level of the candidate not enough compared to what they had in mind when they were posting the job.
Now, they might have thought "this guy isn't worth $X, let's offer him $Y" instead, but offering an exceptionally senior candidate $100K is one hell of a "we don't think you're worth it" snub. It's insulting.