I hear a lot of hiring horror stories. Perhaps it's because my career has been on the East Coast, or because I only apply to places I'm generally interested in

I hear a lot of hiring horror stories. Perhaps it's because my career has been on the East Coast, or because I only apply to places I'm generally interested in and have researched/stalked (vice a shotgun approach) but I've never suffered any hiring silliness. Maybe I'm just lucky? I'm 37 now. I generally assume the absurd hiring practices are either large companies that have become institutionalized and thus have terrible processes free from the scrutiny of sanity (Google, etc) or are small companies that don't really know what they are doing or need. Both sound like terrible places to work.