Similar experience in other places but I replied "We are a little early in the interview phase to talk about this, lets come back to it later".
This worked until I reached the last phase of the interview, the salary discussion. The HR person simply refused to proceed further without the current salary information, as a matter of fact when I told them they should be paying what I'm worth, he said they can't proceed without it any cost. I wasn't interested in the Job so I didn't care, but they seem to count on the fact that given so many programmers out there they it wouldn't matter to them if they would lose a candidate even that late in the interview phase.
In short if there are many devs out there looking for a job, there will always be some one willing to work for a lesser pay.
This worked until I reached the last phase of the interview, the salary discussion. The HR person simply refused to proceed further without the current salary information, as a matter of fact when I told them they should be paying what I'm worth, he said they can't proceed without it any cost. I wasn't interested in the Job so I didn't care, but they seem to count on the fact that given so many programmers out there they it wouldn't matter to them if they would lose a candidate even that late in the interview phase.
In short if there are many devs out there looking for a job, there will always be some one willing to work for a lesser pay.