It feels like even a fairly benign implementation of interviewing references wouldn't scale very well. It's something I might impose on a couple of people I knew well once for a special opportunity but expecting them to repeatedly do this for a bunch of companies using this process seems unreasonable.
And as others have said, while I could provide references going back quite a few years, it definitely wouldn't be every job since high school--even every professional job.
We tend to only ask for two references and it is negotiable. References from the distant past aren’t useful because our goal isn’t to “find liars” as some people suggested. It’s to get an unbiased perspective from someone other than the candidate. FAANG interview system takes way more man hours per candidate than our system.
And as others have said, while I could provide references going back quite a few years, it definitely wouldn't be every job since high school--even every professional job.