At the time we debuted the question, it was actually a recruiting advantage for us. People would interview with us and other "big tech" firms, and get excited about the opportunity because we asked this question.
I was asked this question when I interviewed in 2020 and finished in about 35 minutes without any C experience. I can confirm that this question made me very interested in working for MemSQL/Singlestore: I loved the experience. The next step of the interview was to implement a pretty large concurrent program. I was given conflicting/very little information from the recruiter on how to complete the assignment, which I thought was odd given that in my estimation this was far too large for an interview question. I submitted my work after a couple hours of effort in an incomplete state because I decided I didn't really want to work for the company anymore. I never heard back. Really soured me on the company.
