On the other side of the coin, that necessarily means that most companies asking for 10 years of experience actually only needed to give a person with zero experience 2 weeks to ramp up on the proprietary CRUD apps and uniquely broken reporting systems, and they'd do just fine for the next ten years without learning even one more thing.
The ridiculously over-the-top interview process is one way to signal to hiring candidates that they will actually need some form of skill or experience to work at that company, and that it will therefore be an exciting, resume-building place to be for the next two years. Unfortunately, since the boring, stodgy companies slavishly copy cargo-cult practices of the young, hip, trendy, and popular companies, that signal was already being swamped by the noise by 2004.
