Question: A SEO company suggested we change the order of our HTML meta tags so that `<title>` and `<meta name="description">` are the first two. They say this is to ensure search engines can utilize these two tags. I've been under the impression that the order of tags inside the document's head is not significant. Have I been wrong? Are there really search engines that assume that the first two tags are always `title` and `description` and give up looking for them if they aren't?

Answer: 
You are correct. The order of those tags do not matter for SEO. They just need to be present. Whomever said that is obviously clueless (and of course running an SEO business. Sigh).
From a functionality point of view the following from Bootstrap seems to be the better order of the meta tags: 

```
    1) <meta charset="utf-8">
    2) <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge,chrome=1">
    3) <title></title>
    4) <meta name="description" content="">
    5) <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">

```

According to the people at Google, what matters for SEO is

1. being mobile friendly
2. title and description
3. unique and worthwhile content

If your site is not mobile friendly they do not even look at 2) or 3). If it is mobile friendly they may use the title and description when they list your site. No guarantees on that. They may decide to come up with their own description based on what they find on your site.

If your content is plagiarized or repetitious and if you try to stuff it full of keywords or use other 'BlackHat' techniques, those things will hurt you and possibly ban you.