11 4 / 2013
on building a better product + team
“it is not a distraction from our work because it is our work.” @marcia_lee on devs taking time to recruit/interview. With phrases like “…a continuous and glorious swirl of teaching + learning…”, how can you resist reading on?
07 4 / 2013
A Khanversation with…Stephanie Chang, Software Developer
On her first Khanniversary, developer Stephanie Chang reflects back on the past year at Khan Academy and her path to KA.
17 9 / 2012
We were privileged to have an entertaining and insightful q&a last week with python creator Guido van Rossum.
14 9 / 2012
The intern experience
Today we say farewell to the last of our awesome interns. We are sad to see them go, as they have been such an incredible addition to our team, and led to all sorts of amazingness including our new CS platform, international landing pages, and a new community forum.
As yet another sign of how remarkable they are, Dylan wrote a blog post capturing what he did, and why he thought his Khan Academy internship experience was pretty sweet…
Check it out at: http://dylanv.org/2012/09/14/the-khan-academy-internship-experience/
04 9 / 2012
The Rise of the Interns
What’s the KA intern experience like? Dylan sums it up nicely in his post.
This summer, we had an amazing cohort of interns working at Khan Academy. Here’s a taste of what a few of them were up to:
Jamie Wong - computer science, developer tools
Ben Alpert - man about town
Ankit Ahuja - video discussions
Omar Rizwan - exercises, coaching, tomfoolery
Dylan Vassallo - datastore, international landing pages
It’s incredible and humbling what our intern team has been able to achieve in one short summer!
As a bonus, check out David Hu’s mind-blowing video from his 2011 Winter internship.
(Source: khanacademy)
23 8 / 2012
From intern Jamie Wong: What I did at Khan Academy
Our interns set the bar high, and have some really great practices like blogging about their internship experiences. Here’s a post from intern Jamie Wong capturing what he’s been up to this summer: http://jamie-wong.com/2012/08/22/what-i-did-at-khan-academy/
22 8 / 2012
Until we meet again
We were all a bit misty eyed today, and with good reason. Today’s is Ben Alpert’s last day with us this summer. We’re all quite attached to this outstanding intern, so much so that another outstanding 2nd time intern, David Hu not only did a special bread time yesterday, but also coordinated a special gift - provided as an incentive to return for a third internship.
Hipchat looked like:
Here’s a pic of the last high bensity meeting this summer near the BEN diagram.
Thanks Ben Alpert for returning this summer to increase our Bensity, step into a mentor role, organize events like FIXIT days and overall be so darn productive. We’ll miss having you here in-person and look forward to seeing you again very soon! <3
22 8 / 2012
Brave New-DB World
Intern Dylan Vassallo has been working this summer to convert our Google App Engine datastore to use the next-generation “NDB” Python API.
Read more about Dylan’s experience in converting our system to use NDB. And if you’re considering upgrading your App Engine to use NDB, don’t miss A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Upgrading App Engine models to NDB.
21 8 / 2012
15 8 / 2012
"This is amazing
I love you guys
Going through the first lesson with my brother
It brought me to tears because I’ve been trying to teach him for the last year
And all it took was a girl talking about pikachu for him to understand what a method is on CS"
08 8 / 2012
Nice people: Be nice and pass it around!
One of our interns mentioned “It feels odd to say, but you guys are so NICE during the interview process and are even nicer in-person.” I smiled when I heard this because yes, it was odd to say, but also, it was so nice to say.
It seemed unusual to comment on because, wouldn’t you hope most folks are nice? But in my experience, there’s something about bringing people together at work that makes people feel like they are fighting over pieces of a pie, instead of uniting to make that pie grow. But what affects that?
There’s a bit of a chicken and egg question hidden in here - is it the organizational culture that makes us nice or is it something more inherent in each of us?
I would like to think that it’s both - we started with nice, fun folks who want to positively impact the world, and niceness is infectious. Sal’s personality set the pace and tone - and lucky for us, it is a fun, quirky, intellectual, innovative vibe that attracted some amazingly talented and nice folks. That vibe penetrated into our hiring process, where we hired more nice, fun, amazing people. And not surprisingly, those nice, fun people do nice, fun things like plan social outings or bake bread each week. And the more invested nice, fun people get in making work a great place, in turn it perpetuates more niceness and fun to pop up around the office. It’s a circle of niceness, you might say.
I am continually amazed by our folks here and usually comment on how smart and accomplished folks are, but perhaps the bigger distinction is how NICE these smart folks are. Craig gave us the biggest compliment when he commented that it’s rare to find a place with such super competent AND super nice people. Of course, we all blushed when Craig said that.
But really, how can you not be nice when folks are so nice? In the spirit of Sal’s 2012 Rice Commencement speech, perhaps test this theory: try being nice and see what comes back around. The world usually can use an extra smile or nice gesture. It’s like when you look at Mr. Happy, it’s hard not to smile back!
17 7 / 2012
The dev team hung out with Peter Norvig yesterday afternoon and picked his brain about Google, education, CS and more!
16 7 / 2012
KA In-house Open-house
Last Saturday, a few select developers got an inside peek into dev life at Khan Academy.
Check out a few photos capturing highlights from the afternoon:
Employees showed off their current projects to guests. In the picture above, John Resig (jQuery creator) gives a sneak peak of our computer science curriculum to launch later this summer.
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Sal Khan, John Resig, Ben Kamens and Jason Rosoff enjoyed an informal Q&A session with our guests, who had the opportunity to get the inside scoop on burning questions. Among the hot topics included this question: How do we attract top talent when we are a nonprofit? How do we hire such talented developers? Short answer: We have an inspiring mission, we give people the scope and freedom to have major impact on millions of learners, and we pay on-par with a for-profit so folks don’t have to worry about money.
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Afterwards, guests chilled with our employees enjoying ice cream sundaes and freshly baked bread courtesy Chefmaster Hu.
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Thanks to those who joined us!
