It was a long and difficult hiring process for a Lead Data Scientist role. Even though I discussed my salary expectations from the beginning and they confirmed that they were within their budget, after 5 hours of interviews over 3 weeks, I was offered HALF of my salary expectations. They tried gaslighting me into believing I had actually specified my expectations as gross, not net salary. I was told that I didn't have enough experience for their position (although they were willing to hire me as a Lead, for half of what I asked for). After I told them that the offer was actually very weak and that I already had significantly better offers on the table, I was told to keep in mind that those offers, although better, were probably for a one-off short-term employment and that I would not have job stability (which is what they are offering me, hoping for a collaboration of at least 5 years - at a declarative level, obviously, They were not offering me any written assurance or fixed-term contract). So, in this order, I had: - HR interview (one hour), in which I discussed my salary expectations, which were validated by them; - interview with a manager from GlobalLogic (which was very awkward, he didn't know what to tell or ask me, in order to occupy the half-hour time, He didn't even know how to answer simple questions like "what is the team I would be employed in composed of?"); - initial screening test (one hour); - technical interview with the client (90 minutes, went very well, the client team was very nice); - interview with the client team manager (30 minutes); - pre-offer interview (30 minutes). In total, 5 hours spent in interviews for this position.