Got call from HR after applying through Linked in. Talked to hiring manager over phone about the position, and position seemed fine and challenging. Called in for in person, and HR discussed about salary expectation. As he tried to set the expectation low since beginning by saying that the max salary cap is 15% less than what I make right now, I almost declined to go forward with that. But also told me that he would be working on getting me the market rate, to which I agreed for on site interview.
It was ~2.5 hours interview, divided between 5 interviewers (30 minutes each). The difficulty level of interview was average, I did very well on almost all questions. Felt pretty good about the people I would be working with.
HR told to follow up in 2 days, and it got delayed for 1 more week. At the end, HR called to inform that I did pretty good on interview but they can not match the salary. In my opinion, This was known thing before scheduling an on site interview. This is waste of time, energy and money. No one gains from this.
May be it's good that this happened to me before I joined the company.