I used Dreamhost at one point and regretted it the month after. They're just plain awful. Not even their shared hosting plan is what they claim it is... they shut down mine after ONE blog post became popular and started receiving a lot of hits.
I've been using DH for almost 10 years (I've switched to dedicated servers years ago so I haven't been affected by those shared hosting issues, though their recent main switch / nameserver failure did.)
I don't know anybody inside DH personally, but I initially liked about them having atmosphere of a company run by a bunch of geeks. It's been inspiring to watch how they handle various issues as they grow, and yet try to keep the atmosphere. Sure they've made some basic mistakes which can be criticized as "unprofessional", but any company can do so. As the number of customers grow, you need to hire more staff and I think it gets difficult to keep the high standard.
When you start up a company, probably it consists of only smart people. As you grow and you have to hire more staff, some junior, and it'd be getting difficult to for you to track what everyone is doing... how will you handle the situation?
Just stay away.