I insist on discussing salary range up front to avoid wasting everyone's time over the next couple of calls... also coding tests are a pain in the ass and as a general rule I don't do them. If I can walk someone through a project I've worked on and discuss it, or do a collaborative code review, that works, otherwise I thank them for the opportunity and move on.
I don't get a lot of callbacks anymore since taking this stance, but that's fine. There's a reason why probation periods exist, and after a few years in the field, most engineers are able to adapt to a new code base just fine, it's the soft skills that interviews should filter for anyhow.
I take exactly the same stance. I find that, while I'm not contacted for followups from places like LinkedIn and cold-contact recruiter emails, the approach does resonate with smaller companies that look to places like AngelList and Moonlight for their recruiting efforts.
Tech recruiting has become a massive numbers, volume grift.
I don't get a lot of callbacks anymore since taking this stance, but that's fine. There's a reason why probation periods exist, and after a few years in the field, most engineers are able to adapt to a new code base just fine, it's the soft skills that interviews should filter for anyhow.
my2c
edit: typo