Taking a quote from somewhere else as a reply always risks the possibility that it doesn't quite fit what it is being used as a reply to.

The quote might not fit perfectly, but the insight does.

I was pointing out that the described competence level implies that a competent programmer must be in the top 0.5% of the candidates for the job, not the top 0.5% of all programmers in the world.

And the point of the quote is that this really doesn't say as much as you think. Hence why "99.5% of candidates fail the FizzBuzz test" isn't as implausible as on first glance.