The top 5%

I have heard this before, actually the first time I heard this was in 1989:

An even more fascinating metric is this: 5% of programmers are 20x more productive than the other 95%. If this were a science, like it claims, we could figure out how to get everyone to the same level.

From a commencement address given by Bruce Eckel for Neumont University, a school in Salt Lake City.