I applied and weirdly enough I got a contact from the recruiter letting me know that they were about to wrap up with a person but if that did not work out, they would like to talk to me.
About a week later, they reached out to start conversations. I had a first interview with the recruiter where we discuss the usual, including salary expectations (about which I was clear). It was within their scale at the time allegedly so we moved to the next stage.
The interview with the hiring manager was interesting. Somewhat unsettling in the sense that they let me know that they "worked a lot of hours a day but they did not expect me to do so". I felt it kind of like a suggestion that I might want to overwork if I wanted to keep up - but that is absolutely subjective. I do believe talking about overworking is not something to brag about but rather a problem.
The outcome was super good and the hiring manager let me know that would move to the next step that was a sort-of automated online test that is allegedly difficult and is aimed at testing logic thinking and similars.
I expected the invitation to that interview, but in place I got an email from the recruiter mentioning that they had decided to narrow the scope of the role and give this person less of a workload so the salary range had substantially decreased from what we had discussed - I am talking 20/25% than the pre-agreed range.
I obviously declined and pulled off of the process.
I believe either (i) they are very messy in their recruitment and defining business needs for employees; or (ii) the recruiter has some very questionable recruitment practices. I incline towards the latter due to how the conversations went.
For additional context, when I applied the role had already been open for quite a few months, because I'd consistently seen it in Linkedin. They just created a new opening every once in a while so it did not appear as an opening that had been there for long.