SQL Quest › SQL Interview Questions › Aggregation & Grouping
Highest Total Salary Budget Department
Finance asks Google's People Analytics team every fiscal planning cycle: which department has the highest total salary budget? (Sum of all salaries, not average — headcount matters.) Return department, total_budget, headcount, and avg_salary (rounded to nearest dollar). Use a subquery in HAVING to match the maximum total. Order by department ascending (safety tie-breaker in case two departments tie for the top budget). This nested-aggregation pattern — MAX of SUMs — is a Google-favorite interview because you have to think one level deeper than 'just GROUP BY'.
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Schema
employees
| emp_id | name | department | position | salary | hire_date | manager_id | performance_rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alice Johnson | Engineering | Senior Developer | 95000 | 2019-03-15 | 5 | 4.5 |
| 2 | Bob Smith | Engineering | Developer | 75000 | 2020-06-01 | 1 | 3.8 |
| 3 | Carol Williams | Marketing | Marketing Manager | 85000 | 2018-09-20 | NULL | 4.2 |
Expected output: Single department with the largest combined salary spend
Hint
Concepts
SELECT GROUP BY Aggregation Subquery HAVING
Practise the topic: SQL practice questions · GROUP BY exercises · CTE practice
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