It's been years I wanted to join GitLab, as it is a product that I love and use for almost three years now with our team. I finally sent them my application on December after I feel confident enough that I have the skillset to offer.
Three days ago, I received an email invitation from one of their recruiters to set up a screening interview with an intern recruiter (yes, at this stage I already felt a bit strange that I’d be having an interview with an intern). Yesterday, it was cancelled by a different person from a higher position, saying “We do not have an entity or payroll solution to hire employees in your country and do not have a business need for contractors in this jurisdiction currently”. I tried to stay calm and email this person to make sure we’re on the same page, I got a confirmation that stated “We do currently have contractors in France but cannot hire any more at this time”.
I was feeling confused, disappointed, angry, and sad at the same time. I feel that I've read all of the infos and links they provided, I even found some bugs and opened issues on Gitlab.com to give feedbacks. But I didn't notice that they lay out information explicitly about not recruiting anyone from France now, especially since I saw they have three contractors now in France on their team members page - I also did try to estimate my salary expectation with their Compensation Calculator with my location : France, which works out well.
I’ve been reading interview stories with GitLab in Glassdoor, and I can confirm that there might be a disorganisation in keeping everyone in the loop in the company. Since it is scaling up very fast, with teams who work uniquely in remote.