Yes, and the funny thing is the author even didn't get the correct take-away from this event.
Ballmer looked at the bottom line, was surprised by the number he saw and then started looking at the math that produced that number in detail. It has nothing to do with being a math wizz. The lesson here is that good executives ignore noise (the speaker) and focus on importance (numbers).
Balmer isn't a superhuman who can listen to a talk, read slides and do higher level math simultaneously, but he can spot a bottom line number that is surprising given his mental model of the deal. He expected to see one number and saw something else. That's when he stopped skimming the slides and gave 100% of his attention to the math that produced that bottom line number. That's also the point where he tuned out the speaker completely.
Math genius is not required. Superhuman ability to divide attention is not required. The only skill Ballmer displayed here is ability to direct his attention to a number he didn't trust, which turned out to be the right decision.
Programmers of average ability have their spider sense tingle when they look at code with sql injections, or at loops that don't terminate, or suspect allocation/threading logic. Bad code looks bad. Not always, but often enough. Finance is no different.
In my experience most do. Itβs just that they work on project that leave zero time to do anything to fix the issue. Customer is paying to add feature X not to fix Y that still worked yesterday.
Often so busy it's like merging on to the expressway with someone behind you honking, you look over your shoulder, it seems sorta alright, so you go ahead.
Ballmer looked at the bottom line, was surprised by the number he saw and then started looking at the math that produced that number in detail. It has nothing to do with being a math wizz. The lesson here is that good executives ignore noise (the speaker) and focus on importance (numbers).
Balmer isn't a superhuman who can listen to a talk, read slides and do higher level math simultaneously, but he can spot a bottom line number that is surprising given his mental model of the deal. He expected to see one number and saw something else. That's when he stopped skimming the slides and gave 100% of his attention to the math that produced that bottom line number. That's also the point where he tuned out the speaker completely.
Math genius is not required. Superhuman ability to divide attention is not required. The only skill Ballmer displayed here is ability to direct his attention to a number he didn't trust, which turned out to be the right decision.
Programmers of average ability have their spider sense tingle when they look at code with sql injections, or at loops that don't terminate, or suspect allocation/threading logic. Bad code looks bad. Not always, but often enough. Finance is no different.