I had the phone interview.

I've applied at Google before and took another job because the process took so long. This time, I applied to Google before I started looking anywhere else. It was a good decision, as it took over three weeks for the phone interview and another two weeks before they responded to my performance.

Write a function that, given an array of numbers, returns the highest occurrence of a number. If, for example, 6 showed up the most (8 times), return 8.

I overthought the question. This is in C, and I'm guessing they just wanted me to allocate a full array (256 for 8-bit) and increment an entry whenever that number occurs (histo[number]++), while keeping the highest occurrence in a return variable (if (histo[number] > highest) highest++;).

I thought the solution was way too simple (like 6 lines tops), so I devised a solution that would work for very large numbers for which a full array couldn't be allocated (64-bit = 2^64 array, for instance). It wasn't as memory- and computationally efficient as allocating a full array for lower bit number ranges (8, 16, 32), but it was a more robust and complete solution.

Anyways, I guess he didn't see it that way. They turned me down. 8(

So, warning: don't overthink a question on a phone interview. They're more likely to just want the 6-line quick answer on a phone interview. I think the phone interview is purely to weed out the complete idiots. If you overthink what they think is an easy problem, then you look like a complete idiot.

Onsite is more challenging. I did the onsite a few years ago, and the solutions and implementation required some thought.