That just made me a day. My searching for a job is generally like this: I send a CV, then there is a short call (or email) with this one question at the end: "How much do you want?". Then I usually don't want to reply, but I got convinced with "I cannot go with you further without this information".

So I give them some number, usually something like I'm getting at that moment.

Then I get no reply or "we cannot pay you that much".

The last time I got that from a huge international company, where I really wanted to work. That company has been publishing the same job offers for the last year. I wrote something that I expected maybe some proposal from there side, etc. The answer was really funny "we are not negotiating salaries at this moment of the process".

And all that was even before any technical interview.

And that company is still publishing the same job offers :)

So I'm really confused. I have over 15 years of experience in many different areas, and still the recruitment process is so broken that only sometimes I can get to the technical interview.