As someone who didn't major in CS, the technical interview is the reason I was able to get a job. I didn't have ton of professional experience, and I didn't have a degree in a directly relevant field. But in a technical interview, I could show that yes, I really did know how to code.

I did have a "portfolio" of projects on Github, but it wasn't very large, and the most interesting project there were, well, too complicated for an interviewer to understand in short amount of time. And what about people who don't contribute to open source, either due to lack of time or desire? What do they have for a portfolio?

Don't get me wrong, technical interviews certainly aren't perfect, and there are a lot of ways to improve them. But I think they should be improved by making them measure what an developer actually does, rather than removing them altogether. In fact, I would say that if accountants (or any other technical profession) aren't assessed on their technical ability as part of the interview process, maybe they should be.