Yes, these are both real risks. There are potential solutions. There are so many job levels at big companies like Microsoft. A candidate who is weaker could in

Yes, these are both real risks. There are potential solutions. There are so many job levels at big companies like Microsoft. A candidate who is weaker could interview for software engineer 3 (made up title for example) and be offered a software engineer 2 position with the understanding that the company sees potential, but wants to start the person at what they see as an appropriate level. The high performing candidate may ignore a job listing for a position which doesn't have a high enough top end to the range, but perhaps if they are being recruited rather than approaching the company, the recruiter could recognize the value of the candidate and find a higher role which would have a more competitive salary range. Some companies can only hire specific advertised roles, but in many cases they advertise for one role/level and end up hiring candidates for others. Big companies could also have open reqs for more levels than they think they need, and then slot the candidates in to the level which makes sense. Another approach they could take is to make the published salary ranges more broad than the are in practice. Hotels in many places have to publish the room rate, but typically this is an insanely high number which only happens when there's a special event or something.