zlacker

Khan Academy | Mountain View, CA and REMOTE USA/CANADA | Senior Backend / Fullstack | https://khanacademy.org/careers

We're a non-profit with a mission to provide a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere. It's a big mission that we're taking on step by step. While we want anyone to be able to get a great education independently, we've been focusing a lot on trying to help teachers working in their classrooms (and a lot of teachers and parents are using Khan away from their classrooms right now!)

Our site has been built on Python 2 and Google App Engine for its first 10 years of existence. We're now in the midst of a rebuild in Go (still on App Engine).[1] Parts of that new Go-based infrastructure are already running in production.

To say that this is an exciting time for us would be an understatement, I think, but we continue to have working sustainably as an engineering principle. (Our principles are available publicly[2].)

[1]: http://engineering.khanacademy.org/posts/goliath.htm [2]: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ZQ-HTuH38L8sf4ZObfJN...

>>dangoo+(OP)
I love how it says 'if you're not a household name explain what your business does', and you go on to explain Khan Academy.

haha everyone knows y'all! You guys are legends. Thanks for the kind and generous work you do over there!

>>rjyoun+W2
Thanks! We are fortunate to have good name recognition. One thing we've noticed is that a lot of folks don't know that we're a non-profit, so we try to make that point as much as we can.

Edit to add: speaking for myself and my perception of my coworkers... We just feel amazingly fortunate to have the opportunity to work toward our mission.

>>dangoo+(OP)
> we continue to have working sustainably as an engineering principle

For me this is a major factor in choosing an employer so I followed your link ([2]) but did not see anything in your principles that refers to working sustainably or work-life balance, etc.

>>levidx+Au
Oh, right you are! My mistake, which is funny because I worked on the engineering principles.

The engineering principles take our overall organization values and lay out engineering-specific takes on them. I haven't seen the organization values posted publicly, but one of the top line values is "Work responsibly and sustainably" and I can say firsthand that this is something we talk about in management meetings.

>>dangoo+Hv
^ Eng manager here at Khan, I can vouch for this!! We have a huge emphasis on work life balance on our team.

>>dangoo+P7
You're very fortunate, indeed. :) It's very frustrating when you can't find a job aligned with your values. Tbh, one of the reasons I've decided to create zoonk.org (my current side project) was because I couldn't get a job at Khan Academy or Wikimedia.

>>rjyoun+W2
Actually, I'd say that even if they think they're a household name, they should still explain what they do. I'm not very tuned into the consumer economy and there are likely a lot of "household names" I've never heard of.

It gets old researching every company name that's not familiar :-(

>>shawnj+RE
+1... Software Engineer here at Khan. I can confirm that as well, and I can say with all confidence that we have a good work-life balance here :)

>>rjyoun+W2
I had the utter pleasure if contributing some code to a (now defunct) Khan Academy project. Some of the most amazing people I've encountered in OSS.

Truly a gem of the internet, in every way.

>>dangoo+P7
Are there positions for software engineer interns? I have been looking all the time and I keep missing the recruitment window.

My academic life would be so painful without khanacademy and it'd be great to contribute to this.

>>dangoo+P7
> we're a non-profit

Does that mean all your financials are public? Where can we find the full reports?

>>kyawza+Nz1
I'm happy to hear that you've found us helpful in your academic life!

We don't have internship openings right now. We generally do those interviews in the fall (for the following summer).

>>zerr+gK1
There are links here: https://khanacademyannualreport.org/financial-information/

>>HeyLau+ng1
I was being facetious my friend. I'm in marketing so I'm well aware.

>>dangoo+(OP)
Hey,

stupid question, but why NA-only? I'm based in Europe, and I love what Khan Academy does. I have checked your career site in the past, but NA-only means I don't even apply. It's such a shame for Khan Academy.

>>Bossin+zj3
Hi! There are no stupid questions. I wanted to make sure I had the right answer, so I had actually just spoken with my manager about this yesterday.

As of now, in order to ensure legal compliance, we work through another company for hiring outside of where we're officially incorporated. Because of this, it's just too expensive for us to hire people elsewhere.

This is beyond the timezones and other logistical issues, of course.

>>dangoo+XF3
Interesting, I'd have assumed that it's much cheaper because of the insane salaries in the US, compared to even salaries in UK or Germany.

Anyway, I know so many people in Europe who absolutely love Khan Academy. Keep that in mind when thinking about expanding your talent pool :).

Also keep in mind that if you can hire in one EU country, you get access to the talent pool of the whole EU, since I can just show up in any EU country and start working.

Cheers!

>>Bossin+yC4
Those are all good points, and we do love our learners and teachers in Europe.

Thanks!

>>dangoo+072
Thanks! It would be great if you could specify the salary range here as well.

>>zerr+5ud
I don't know what the range is, or if we post those publicly. What I do know is that we pay competitively, but we obviously don't have stock so there is no stock component to the pay. Someone whose primary goal is to make money would likely do well to look at companies with big stock and bonus plans.

People who are looking to make a good tech salary and help the world at the same time will be happy at Khan, I think.