[svachalek]

From a Silicon Valley perspective, I didn't even know that this was something that companies considered not doing. 'Round here, a technical interview is guaranteed, it's more a question of if/when there will be anything else involved in the interview. Also, will it be a mundane technical interview, or more like 6+ hours doing Top-Coder style questions on a whiteboard? It used to be only Microsoft and Google were known for that but now it's practically everyone as far as I can tell.

[abecedarius]

Re: your last sentence, it's been common in my experience for at least the last couple of decades: that is, interviews for most of a working day, including at least one each focused on coding and design. Maybe my experience is unusual, but there were both big companies and startups.