Absolutely true. This question was intended to illustrate how a real-life problem sometimes forces you to choose the lesser of two evils. Both nested joins and right outer joins reduce readability and ease of understanding of a query - so pick your poison. I have been in this position a few times, and whatever I chose, I always felt it was not the optimal choice.

BTW, now that I no longer have to support SQL Server 2000, I can use a better solution using a Common Table Expression:

WITH CustomersWithRecentOrders AS

(SELECT c.Name, o.OrderDate, c.SalesRep

FROM dbo.Customers AS c

INNER JOIN dbo.Orders AS o

ON o.CustomerID = c.CustomerID

AND o.OrderDate > DATEADD(month, -4, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP))

SELECT e.Name AS SalesRep, co.Name AS Customer, co.OrderDate

FROM dbo.Employees AS e

LEFT JOIN CustomersWithRecentOrders AS co

ON co.SalesRep = e.EmployeeID

WHERE e.Position = 'SalesRep';

Note that this query does NOT produce the exact same execution plan as the original, but it DOES produce the exact same results. And of all the options, I think this one is the most readable.