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I’m interviewing for a firm tomorrow (I know someone who is also scheduled to interview there as well). It’s for a lateral position.

I went to check the job description today and the job posting is gone. My recruiter (as of today) said the interview is still on.

In my experience, when a job is removed from the website, it means someone accepted the position.

Has anyone else been in this situation where they’re essentially wasting time for an interview that there isn’t an opening for?

I’d much prefer to go to work so I can bill a few hours instead of going to the 3+ hour callback if that’s the case.

My firm had a job posting up for a lateral candidate, and we moved it off and on the website for various reasons - once it had been up too long, so we took it down and revamped it to try for some different hits (and so it didn't look like it had been up for almost a year...), once it was because we decided to go with direct recruiting (having a headhunter specifically reach out to people), another time it was because recruiting just randomly took it down. None of the times were because we'd had somebody already accept an offer. Just assume they still have an opening, and treat the interview like the listing is still on the website.

No one wants to waste time doing an interview for a position that doesn't exist, least of all employers. If the job had been filled they'd cancel the interview. They may feel confident they have a good pool of applicants and don't want to review any more applications unless/until none of the current candidates work out. It's theoretically possible they interviewed someone they really love and want to make an offer to but haven't gone through the whole approval process yes, or they have made the offer and that person hasn't accepted yet, so they're continuing to interview for backups. But even if that's the case, plenty of people get hired as the second or third choice for jobs.

So treat it like a real opportunity, because it is.