Interestingly, the reason I chose to use the syntax I did is that most people assume that this type of query _has_ to be written using a CTE. There are two schools of thought on CTEs versus nested subqueries. I used to always use CTEs, but when there are several nested CTEs it can be be more convenient to debug written as nested subqueries - all you have to do is highlight a section of the code and run it; with nested CTEs you usually have to edit the query to select directly from whichever intermediate CTE you are interested in. Overall, though, it's purely a question of style; both are correct.