I understood it as them turning down an offer despite the lucrative salary, not because of it. Probably because the circumstances were not quite what they were hoping for.

Some companies like to be sneaky with whether they're open to remote or not.

"Oh we have plenty of remote employees! But it is on a team per team basis so that's something you'll have to bring up with your manager", says the recruiter

"Oh that's a great question, let me check in with my VP but we should definitely keep the ball rolling!", says the manager.

The interviews go on, and then they push an offer with a big number, except now they're not ambiguous and they tell you you're gonna have to move to SF/NYC/etc, hoping the big number will do the convincing.

In my experience, pulling that trick on a Swedish or a Swiss person will be met with a flat "nah I'm not interested in SF, thanks for wasting my time".

(same trick applies with companies who have multiple offices and tell you they're open to you working at $OFFICE_OF_CHOICE... until the offer is on the table and all of a sudden they really care where you'll have to be)

There's definitely lots of cultural things at play here; one of them in my experience is that American culture tends to see a lot of things as "negotiable", whereas European cultures (especially nordic/germanic ones!) like things to be clear and black on white from the get go.

Indeed. As a Swedish dev, I had part of that experience with a known American company that seemed interested in hiring me to work with an important but very industry-specific technology I was familiar with. It was not a long process with multiple interviews, but I did have a quick introductory call and one substantial interview, after which they said that the teams working with that tech are always onsite in California.

That's it, at that moment I am no longer interested, and it leaves somewhat of a bitter taste - they definitely knew where the position was and could have saved everyone some time by saying it right away.