Why Didn't Steve Ballmer Study Computer Science?

Frank X. Shaw says Steve Ballmer did not study computer science because a high school math teacher set him on a math journey he loved. A New York Times profile was the first time anyone asked him why.

The piece was a big Sunday business story in the two thousands, one of the first really big profiles of Steve Ballmer. Frank X. Shaw calls it super risky. A chief executive who hears the same question over and over gives rote answers, the same string pulled again and again, mental boilerplate. The reporter asked something Steve Ballmer had never gotten. Ballmer had come to Harvard as a math guy at a time when other math people became computer science people. Why not him? Why didn't he study computer science? He paused and talked about how he became a math guy. The high school teacher believed in him, told him he was super talented, urged him to invest in math in different ways, and sent him to a math competition. Ballmer had not known there were math competitions. The teacher set him off on the math journey, and he loved it. The reporter then found the teacher, an insurance salesman in Ohio, and talked with him about Steve Ballmer. It was not a huge part of the story, but it had never been told. In the conversation the teacher is named Ted Coos.

Frank X. Shaw says a reporter who does real research thinks hard about the question because the goal is a different answer, not the same one the chief executive has already given.