I interviewed with Quizlet for a software engineer position as they were looking to expand their small team and add a few talented developers to their roster. They were looking to add some interns from MIT (the founder's alma matter) as well as some other full-time developers so I submitted my resume and heard back pretty quickly. The first interview consisted of a general telephone interview with pretty general programming questions. This person proved to be my main point of contact within the company. As I said, it was very general - like if you had to develop for one platform, iPhone, Android, or mobile web, which would you choose and why? After this interview I was pleased to hear that I would be speaking with the lead developer there for a second phone interview. This consisted of an hour of more technical questions. For example, describing the different types of joins and event bubbling in JavaScript. I did alright in this interview, not spectacular. So far this company is proving to be pretty decent in their interview process I thought. A couple days after my second phone interview I received the great news that I would do an in-person interview up in San Francisco. Here is where the interview process fell apart and big red flags became apparent. Firstly, I live about 6 hours away from San Francisco. Only when I mentioned something did they offer to pay for my plane tickets - down and back in the same day! No hotel, no offer to pay for a cab, no offer to pay for meals, parking, or anything. I found this strange from a startup that was supposedly so cashflow positive that they didn't need outside investors. I didn't particularly like the thought of flying up and back in the day, so I decided to drive there and make a little bit of a trip out of it. Quizlet didn't offer to cover my gas nor did they offer to cover my parking at the meter even during my interview. They did give me a free lunch as I went out with a couple of the employees, but the company credit card bounced so one of the employees had to use their own card. Hmm... very odd. The interviews I had were very pleasant. I met with the owner, the marketing manager, as well as two developers there. They were very hospitable and certainly quite nice. I was also given a tour of their office and showed some statistics related to the sites. My general computer as well as mathematical/technical knowledge was tested (how does SSL guard against a man-in-the-middle attack, how many high schools are there in the United States, and so on). When I was done, I was told they would discuss it for a day and get back to me. Three days later when I followed up with them a second time (first email was sent shortly after the interview was done), I was told I would not be selected. So at the end of the day I spent about $400 on a trip to San Fran with 10:00-3:30 of one day being all interviews to receive no offer, and no offer to reimburse my expenses. Very strange experience indeed.