The silence after a promising conversation is a signal, not a mystery. If DeepMind's hiring process leaves candidates guessing for weeks, the takeaway isn't that you did something wrong. It's that the process itself is broken. The applicant in this post did the right thing by reaching out directly to a research scientist, and they got a neutral response. That neutrality is the problem. It creates false hope where clarity would serve everyone better.
What this means for you is practical: treat a lack of response as a soft rejection, but keep the door open. Follow up once, professionally, and then move on. If you hear back, great. If you don't, you've lost nothing except the weight of waiting. The person who posted this is not alone in experiencing this pattern. Many applicants report the same thing, and while we can't confirm every anecdote, the consistency of the experience points to a systemic issue. DeepMind may not intentionally ghost, but the effect is the same for the candidate on the other side.
There's also a lesson here about how you frame your own process. If you're applying to roles in this space, you're likely dealing with high demand and opaque internal workflows. That doesn't excuse the behavior, but it should change your strategy. Don't anchor your confidence to a single neutral reply. Use the initial conversation as a data point, not a promise. The research scientist's response was probably genuine but noncommittal. That's not a green light. It's a yellow one.
The real issue is that silence from a major lab like DeepMind reads as rejection, and that ambiguity hurts both sides. Candidates lose time and motivation. The company loses talent that might have thrived with clearer communication. So, if you're in this position, set your own deadline for closure. If you don't hear back within two weeks of your follow-up, close the loop yourself. Send a brief note thanking them for their time, then move on. That's not giving up. That's taking control of a process that won't control you.