I feel like the big issue in the provided example is not so much the fundamentals, but that the "fundamentals" in this case is just buzzword trivia. Maybe a bet

I feel like the big issue in the provided example is not so much the fundamentals, but that the "fundamentals" in this case is just buzzword trivia. Maybe a better question would be to ask about atomicity and isolation specifically in the context of a DB? For example, to me a fundamental for C++ development is knowing the difference between an std::vector and an std::list. Can you really be an effective C++ programmer without knowing that? Yes the field is vast and lists and vectors can mean different things in different contexts, but you're applying to a C++ development job so I expect you to know some basics about C++ specifically...it doesn't seem that unreasonable to me.