After applying at GitLab's website I quickly got a response from a recruiter who did a first standard interview with me. Pretty normal questions related to my previous skills and my experience in other companies and motivation for applying for GitLab. After that I was invited to a series of interviews with other GitLab people in the following order: 2nd interview: Web/UX designer who I was suppose to work with, 3rd interview: Senior UX Designer, 4th interview: Senior Frontend Engineer, 5th interview: Senior Director, Marketing & Sales Development. The interviews were scheduled within a week time from each other and everyone was very friendly and it seemed like I was doing well. The next step was a design challenge in which I was supposed to design an code a fictitious landing page for an upcoming GitLab webcast. That's when thinks got weird. I worked on the challenge and after spending hours (including on sleepless night) I finished and handed off all the code and the published URL for the LP. After a week the Web/UX designer replied that several people from the hiring team was on vacation and they would be reviewing my application soon. After 10 days with no answers from neither the recruiter or anyone else I got a canned response from a 'no-reply' sender saying that GitLab did not have an entity or payroll solution to hire employees in my country and did not have a business need for contractors in my jurisdiction. So, my question is: couldn't the recruiter or someone else from the hiring team looked at my initial application and warned me about that right away? Was that on purpose or an accident. Considering the second option, why did the recruiter send me an email herself explaining that or even apologizing for wasting my time for nothing. Or even a feedback on my design exercise. At least I could have learned something from the process. That seemed really unprofessional and utterly disrespectful. Really sad.