For my part, I have hundreds of other candidates to choose from.
People like you are the ones who grumble that it's hard to find good employees, or have to deal with "bad hires". I've built up and staffed teams for a long time and I understand that the best employees sometimes need flexibility. Because the good ones are all going and working for people who want to treat them like adults and understand that the person doing the hiring is just as disposable as the people attempting to be hired.
If timelines don't line up, you just say they don't line up and go your separate ways. No harm no foul.
And that's fine for some people who are just "passing through" with no concept of ownership of anything. A lot of people probably.
But you're also going to miss out on people that take extreme ownership of success and failure that have really dedicated themselves to various crafts over their life and career.
You will never, ever, ever get the performance and gains by hiring a cog compared to hiring a craftsman.
Just depends on the org priorities.
But I will say, we were also careful to accommodate candidate schedules as much as possible, but yes, we did pass on folks who were asking for significantly more than others. It's a balancing game.
Sounds like you're not there anymore, but Thank You.
It's kind of like how when selling a house your optimal strategy is rarely to try to appeal to the most people. Instead, modifications which greatly increase perceived value in a smaller subset (so long as it isn't too small for your personal goals) will alienate most customers but still increase the sale value in the same timespan.
When you're applying for jobs, some companies aren't willing to play that game, and if you're playing it then that's not just fine; it's ideal. You don't waste your time on companies who won't play ball. Enough will that the strategy still works.