The process is pretty straightforward. A get-to-know-you call from the recruiter, then a technical round. For the technical round, you could expect that you are reviewing a merge request, finding out what the problems are there, and writing descriptive comments, as you will actually be working remotely and asynchronously.

I am honest with myself, and I know I did a great job in that round and actually impressed my interviewers a couple of times.

Maybe there were some stutters in finding the best approach and googling around (you are told you are allowed to), but I did find them and explained the "why" behind them.

If the expectations were for candidates to be super smooth and not even use backspace once, then their slogan of async working is just an irony, as you will have one or two interviewers watching you code over your shoulders!

At the end, I was sure that I would be moved to the next step, as I resolved their challenge pretty well and had a positive collaboration with my interviewers. But instead, after a couple of days, I got one of those automated rejection emails with no additional reasonings. I was supposed to receive a feedback sharing forum, which I never did either.

I believe they were either in doubt if they wanted to really hire someone good for that position, or it might have been a biased decision based on personal preferences.

I am experienced enough to distinguish a bad interview from a good one, and this definitely was a good one. That's why I got disappointed in GitLab.

Find problems in a merge request code review, then fix them on the fly. A feature design could also be expected.