[PaulRivers]

"I think that the perception that it's just a hazing process comes from a failure to look at it from the company's perspective."

Actually, speaking of looking at it from the companies perspective, in 2010 google and several other big name silicon valley companies were successfully sued because they all agreed with each other not to cold call each others employees to try to recruit them. They actively worked to try to make it harder to switch jobs from one company to another.

Right after that, they started doing whiteboard interviews, which serve the same purpose of making it painful to switch companies, but without the risk of being sued.