I submitted my resume and application online and received a call from the then CTO the next day. We talked on the phone for over an hour and I was hooked; I wanted this job, really cool guy which a wealth of knowledge and I wanted to be able to learn from him.
I came in for an in person interview and met with a management type (he left 2 months later) who asked some basic IT related questions.
After the technical review I met with the CEO/Owner who's desk chair was comically high compared to how low the seats for guests were in his office. It was clear this setup was used to make other feels small. He then put his feet up and leaned back while we talked super casually about, not my technical knowledge, but about personality and the fit with the company. I wonder now if he was sizing up how much of a pushover I would be.
It was a bizarre experience but I attributed it to Santa Monica Silicon Beach CEO weirdness. Knowing now how much weirder things would get that should have been a huge red flag.
After beginning work here the CTO that sold me on the job left within a month and I started my indentured servitude. We also went through 3 accountants in 5 months. Then we moved to new ticketing software after being extensively trained on the old. Then staff were required to manually migrate their email to Office 365 from Google Apps with no work time put aside to do it, many of us had to migrate out work email in our off hours, then the CEO decided he didn't like Office 365 and forced all staff to manually migrate their boxes back to Gmail again not setting time aside in the work day to do so which required us to do it in our off hours.