Find Top 10 Employees By Salary

Question

Find the top 10 employees by salary without using LIMIT.

Accepted Answer

```sql
SELECT e1.id, e1.name, e1.salary
FROM employees e1
WHERE (
    SELECT COUNT(*) 
    FROM employees e2 
    WHERE e2.salary > e1.salary
) < 10
ORDER BY e1.salary DESC;
```

This query uses a correlated subquery to count how many employees have a higher salary than the current row, filtering for those with fewer than 10 employees earning more, effectively returning the top 10 highest-paid employees.