By technical interviews, I'm assuming you mean the heavy algorithms because there's no way I would ever take out a technical interview itself - how are you supposed to vet a candidate if you're not able to see them demonstrate their skills?

I have been both a victim and exploiter of the algorithms interview - I wrote a long post about how I used to suck and them and hate them and I still do - but one thing that is sort of an advantage towards job seekers is that they are absolutely exploitable and you can really have a good shot at getting into any job you want if you put enough time prepping.

As for their actual merits towards companies, that's disputable - I mean a lot of larger companies have been using this to some success and I understand that with a higher influx of candidates, it's okay for them to use a process where they can get rid of false positives at the expense of a lot of false negatives. I think they do judge a bit how you think and how you approach a new problem, despite the problems being things that you are likely never to see at work. In addition, there's some merit in the fact that you prepared for these interviews - a sign of hard work that the company will be forced to acknowledge.

Now I think it's a bit more productive to suggest a compromise if you actually want to see some changes happen in the interviewing landscape.

I recently interviewed with Stripe and I absolutely loved their process. I didn't do a single algorithmic problem - they had me coding in Python, making calls to their API and parsing data. I was tasked with finding a bug in a framework, as well as integrating a pre-existing framework into a codebase. I had a pleasant behavioral interview and ultimately got the offer, because this was the stuff I had been doing every single internship. I was so excited to finally be able to go to an interview where I had been prepping by doing my job, which is how I think it should be.

Some smaller startups seem to be making the shift towards this, with pair programming and design as technical interviews with maybe just one algorithmic question. As much as I enjoyed getting better at algorithms, I surely won't miss them if they are eventually the rarity in technical interviews.