I found the interview process to be very transparent, efficient and well defined. I feel that everyone I talked to were some of the kindest, intelligent and down to earth professionals that I have talked with as I interviewed at several companies. Many interviews with other companies felt weird and awkward, however I felt like I was already part of the team during the entire interview process. Since the company is very open with their handbook, it is easy to find the expected process for the position that you're applying for. You can read up on a lot of other things about how the business operates and I encourage you to if you're serious about joining GitLab. I received a thorough email with a take home assessment about a week after I applied online ("write a project summary of how you've solve the problem within the scope of your job description"). The assessment was reviewed the day after I submitted it and the next step to speak with the hiring manager was quickly scheduled a few days later. At each step, the Candidate Experience Specialist on the recruiting team was very prompt in scheduling the next step and providing me thorough emails explaining each step and what to expect. After another 1:1 interview with a technical team member that had background in my job responsibilities and a presentation (expanded on project summary) to a management team panel with Q&A and some great questions from the team, I had a great conversation with the hiring manager that was honest about how the team felt about my experience and how much value I could bring to the team. I also felt very at ease and it just felt like the right fit. The interview process was completed within 4 weeks with 1 step each week. There was a short delay with the approval process of the offer letter due to a transition to some updated processes, however the hiring manager and Candidate Experience Specialist kept me updated via email every 2 days and apologized for the delay while some of the approvers were traveling at conferences or on vacation. Overall, I found that the interview process is very fair and is looking to ensure that you bring the necessary skills and experience to the team, have something extra/special that adds value to the growth of the company, and you are a genuinely kind and personable person that subscribes to the CREDIT values and can easily converse with other members of the team.

After four rounds of interviews with GitLab as well as a lengthy written set of questions, I received the old "radio silence" treatment. Not a "yes", not a "no", not even a "no thanks". I understand that this is common in many companies but is it so hard to treat candidates with a slight modicum of respect? As far as the interviews I did have, the people were very nice and would likely be great co-workers. From what I was able to learn, you would enjoy working at GitLab if: 1. You like working long hours (it's a startup after all). 2. You don't mind being paid below market wages. 3. You don't mind working for a company whose employee philosophy is "hire fast, fire fast". For an entertaining read, you can find a post from a previous employee out there whose experiences working for GitLab caused him to blog about how much he dislikes the company and the way they treat people. One of the original software engineers there has a post on HackerNoon about how poorly he was treated--and he was one the original members of the team! Another thing I learned from my interviews is that GitLab has aspirations to go public in 2020. Given that we're presently nine years into a bull market with tech being the most overheated sector, I'd give that about a 10% chance of happening. Even if they do pull it off, it's pretty obvious that, like so many other tech companies both public and private, the company loses money and is pretty far off from profitability. Heck, even GitHub had huge losses prior to their Microsoft acquisition and they are the public repo market leader. It's 1999 anymore and even highly visible, market-leading companies like DropBox are getting hammered due to lack of profitability. As I said, the people I spoke to were very nice so there are probably some great things about working at GitLab. Many do seem to like working there. If they do make you an offer, just make sure to go into it with your eyes wide open.