I think I’ve applied to 5 jobs that show up as “remote” now only to get halfway through a screening call and find out “oh, we’re looking for people in Albuquerque”.

Are my expectations out of whack? If you’re looking for someone in your city, you’re not looking for someone remote. You’re looking for a local worker who just has an office that’s not on your balance sheet.

Is it semantics?

Am *I* the bastard?

So, I could understand expectation of time zone and country requirements for practical/legal reasons, but that should be specified in the advert.

You're not. Remote means remote. Even timezone difference are not an issue if you're willing to commit. Legal issues are understandable, but unless specified in the ad, they're being dicks and making up reasons for it too.

They still want to be able to drag you on site with a moments notice, but it's _currently_ remote.

Nah, your expectations are fine.
The employer's expectations are shit.

Always were.

I had several jobs which were "flexible hours", "remote work possible", where neither was true.

They just write all that nicely sounding crap in there to get you to sign the contract, and then they're like "okay so from monday to friday 9-5 in hour offices, kthx looking forward to you!", and from then on it's non-negotiable or you get fired.

At least that's how it was for me with these jobs.

Many other jobs were like "looking for unity3d vr/ar/hololens greenfield/r&d project dev", accepted for the position, and then "oh btw here's 3 legacy php projects you'll be maintaining".

You'll be lucky when any of the main points in the offer will turn out to be true =D

tl;dr :
1. don't believe anything written in the job offer, ask about all of it explicitly on the interview.

2. don't believe anything they tell you on the interview, check the contract you're signing.

3. don't believe anything in the contract you're signing, reality will still oftentimes be different anyways.

4. welcome to the world, i guess.