Fiction or non-fiction writing. The difference between Terry Brooks and the average wannabe fantasy author is enormous and the difference between him and JRR Tolkien is greater again.
Mathematics. Terence Tao is as far ahead of the average Math professor as they are of the average high school Math teacher.
Law. If you give the average lawyer twenty times as much time and all the research resources of a partner at Skadden Arps the Skadden guy will still come out on top.
Finance. Whether you’re talking VC, PE or Hedge Funds the people at the top are a lot more than ten times as good as the average, never mind the marginal member of their reference class.
All of academia as far as research is concerned. Research impact as measured by citations is a power law. People at top departments routinely get hundreds of times the citations of those at no name ones.
In any human endeavour that isn’t limited by severe bottlenecks in material input you get people who can do much more with much less than others can, and who are capable of doing things that those less skilled simply can’t do.
Add carpentry or vehicle technician to that list. All jobs where you have some sort of choice on how and what to do and motoric aptitude leads to high variance in skills.
The big difference is maybe that bad vehicle technicians are singled out by the boss or customers and quit? While neither the boss or customer can pinpoint a single programmer.
I think this boils down to literally any arbitrary skill based activity. Unless the output is heavily dependent on RNG, there will always be someone who is orders of magnitude better than the average person.
Mathematics. Terence Tao is as far ahead of the average Math professor as they are of the average high school Math teacher.
Law. If you give the average lawyer twenty times as much time and all the research resources of a partner at Skadden Arps the Skadden guy will still come out on top.
Finance. Whether you’re talking VC, PE or Hedge Funds the people at the top are a lot more than ten times as good as the average, never mind the marginal member of their reference class.
All of academia as far as research is concerned. Research impact as measured by citations is a power law. People at top departments routinely get hundreds of times the citations of those at no name ones.
In any human endeavour that isn’t limited by severe bottlenecks in material input you get people who can do much more with much less than others can, and who are capable of doing things that those less skilled simply can’t do.