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Recursive Team Size Rollup
Using a recursive CTE, calculate the total team size for each manager, including all indirect reports (reports of reports). Show emp_id, name, department, and total_reports (count of all people below them in the hierarchy, direct + indirect). Include employees with 0 reports. Sort by total_reports descending, then name. This recursive aggregation is a harder variant of org chart traversal, asked at Google and Amazon for L5+ roles.
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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: CEO: total_reports=4, VP: total_reports=3
Hint
Concepts
SELECT Recursive CTE CTE JOIN Aggregation GROUP BY UNION
Practise the topic: SQL practice questions · CTE practice · JOIN practice · GROUP BY exercises · Advanced SQL interview questions
In these company practice sets
Amazon · Databricks · Google · Snowflake
A SQL Quest challenge matched to patterns reported for these companies — not a question any of them has published.
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