The interview began mid July and ended mid September. First round was recruiter. It was here that I first brought up my visa status (H1B) and told her that I would only move ahead if the company would transfer my visa. She agreed, it was all good. Second interview was after a couple of weeks. This was two managers and was mostly on my resume and behavioral. After a couple of weeks, had full panel interview with 6 people (2 managers and 4 engineers) that lasted about 3 hours. One interview was team dynamics and the other 2 were a design challenge and a technical round of solving problems on a sheet of paper and walking through my thought process. Aced all of them except a couple of questions (Motor design) which I had no knowledge of. The last round was my hiring manager after a couple of weeks and it went on for an hour and was combination of technical and behavioral. Went very well. They took a week after that and I got a verbal offer from the recruiter. Here is where it started going downhill - The pay was quite low for Palo Alto (130K) and I tried to negotiate a higher pay which was rejected. Also, the company pulled a switcheroo and made the position a Mechanical Engineer role and not a Sr role which I had applied to. I was talked into it saying that there would be quick promotions and 5 years of experience does not qualify for the senior role. I compromised and told them I was OK with the pay, but pointed to the fact that the DOL requires a L3 H1B employee to be paid at least 137K. I did not know if it was the appropriate level, so I asked the recruiter to check with the immigration attorneys and see if a L2 filing would be appropriate. A week goes by and I get a short, cold email from the recruiter thanking me for my time and that the company has decided not to go ahead with my candidature. Upon pressing the recruiter, she said 137K is too high and it would be not be “equitable” to current employees if they paid me more than 130K. I tried discussing options - “can we move money out of my relocation to the base pay? Can we just file it as a L2 position?”. The answer was just no. I saw a lot of employees in Glassdoor complaining about the company not paying them enough, I think I understand it now. A company that makes 2 billion in annual revenue and had spent 2 months interviewing a candidate and does no research on the H1B salary requirements is quick to axe the offer without even trying to make it work. I feel like I dodged a bullet. I fortunately had the foresight to not reject another offer I had for Varian. Ended up going there, no regrets.