Department Top-3 Earners

SQLMediumMid levelGoogle~15 min

Problem

**[Widely asked at FAANG companies]**

A "high earner" is an employee whose salary is in the **top 3 within their department**.
Ties count — if 4 employees are tied for 3rd place, all 4 are high earners.

For every high earner, return `department_name`, `employee_name`, and `salary`,
ordered by department then salary descending.

Tables

Example rows — the live problem includes the full dataset.

staff

emp_id	emp_name	salary	dept_id

departments

dept_id	dept_name

Expected output

Your answer should return 10 rows with the columns dept_name, emp_name, salary.

Starter code (SQL)

SELECT *
FROM staff;

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Solution & explanation

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