Well sure, smaller places might not even be able to muster enough people to do that many interviews. It ends up taking about as long as a Google interview, but it's not just debugging assembly on a whiteboard. We tour you around the site, talk about what you'd be able to work on, etc. The interviewers are selected from several different but related groups so you hear about a lot of different work going on.

One of the facts of research life is that you'll spend a good chunk of time talking to people and presenting your work--it's the price you pay for being able to choose what you work on. This interview process seems to help select for people who work well in that environment.