LIMIT & OFFSET SQL practice problemEasyVerified answer

Top N with ORDER BY DESC + LIMIT

Return the top 3 highest-paid employees.

  • CTEs
  • Sorting
  • Top-N

Interview brief

Understand the request

Compensation analyst The pay dashboard only shows the top earners in its preview card.

List the top 3 highest-paid employees with a deterministic tie-breaker (employee_id ascending). Show first_name, last_name, salary, employee_id.

Return

  • Return first_name, last_name, and salary.

Constraints

  • Use ORDER BY salary DESC with LIMIT 3.

Data you will use

Review the relevant tables before deciding how to join, filter, or aggregate them.

employees

  • first_nameTEXT
  • last_nameTEXT
  • salaryDECIMAL
  • employee_idINTEGER

Hints, when you need them

Open one clue at a time so you still do the reasoning.

Hint 1

For Top-N queries: ORDER BY <metric> DESC, then LIMIT N keeps the first N highest values.

Hint 2

Always add a unique tie-breaker column. Without it, ties at position N can spill into position N+1 unpredictably.

Hint 3

ORDER BY salary DESC, employee_id LIMIT 3

Verified SQL answer

Attempt the problem first, then compare structure and reasoning—not just syntax.

Reveal solution and explanation
SELECT first_name, last_name, salary, employee_id FROM employees ORDER BY salary DESC, employee_id LIMIT 3;

Why this works

The salary, employee_id pair makes the result reproducible across engines and across re-runs. If two employees share the highest salary (Mike at 80000 here is unique, but in larger data this matters), the tie-breaker decides who appears in the Top 3.

Expected result

Use this output to verify values, aliases, ordering, and row count.

first_namelast_namesalaryemployee_id
MikeJohnson800003
AmyTaylor780008
KevinMartinez7600013

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