[InitialBP]

Your example isn't a very good one. If you are 99.99% as good as the next candidate you get no job? How about you get a different job because you're still a top performer. Most (all?) jobs don't have only a single role to be filled across the entire world.

Sure you might not get THE singular highest paid/best position to do what you do really well, but you can certainly still get the 2nd or 3rd or be among the top 100/1000 well paid people who do X.

I stand by the previous commenter, in the vast majority of cases you're still going to have some significant benefit from being near the top even if you aren't "the best".

[jgeada]

fair enough