[brandall10]

It was standard when I entered the market in ‘99.

Occasionally you’ll get a set of rounds that last 3-4 hours, but it was just as rare back then.

The main difference between big tech companies is the reliance on LC type algo/ds, and the insistence on getting to the optimal solution for anything but the hardest questions. Also 'normal' companies are more likely to ask more domain specific questions... for instance, you might get pairing sessions that stress knowledge of language/framework, SQL query building, etc, and are going to be a bit more permissible of mistakes.