Sounds like you dodged a bullet, if that’s how the CEO reacts to you declining the offer. Just imagine how they’d react to somone actually making a mistake at work

It’s a conspiracy, orchestrated by Big Adapter

Someone is asking the important questions

Dude, that’s genius! What if we also attached a thousand motors that spin on each key you press and press a thousand other keys in turn?

The cake is a lie

is that because it’s self hosted?

Correct. It’s important to differentiate “gitlab” the software from “gitlab.com” the hosted service. An account is local to one instance, gitlab is not a federated system. “gitlab.com” is one instance running the “gitlab” software. You will have to sign up on each instance to interact with it. Some instances support third party identity providers, so the signup can be delegated to gitlab.com, or github or whatever else is supported. You still have to “sign up” to each instance though.