Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Khan Academy requests for donations as their servers are at 250% normal load

khanacademy.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 232 posts

Re: Khan Academy requests for donations as their servers are at 250% normal load

#111

Post by tadzik_ »

dmayle wrote: post #27

(Replying to a trollish comment, but don't want to push it to the top). There was a comment about the salary that CEO Sal Khan takes, with is over $800,0000 per year. I think Khan Academy is fantastic, and was going to donate until I saw this figure (verified). I think that it's entirely inappropriate to extract that much from the donations.

From what I gathered, while his salary is 800,000, the costs of IT are about 5M. With 250% of the regular load, while it probably won't go up to 12.5M, the costs likely increase by so much than his salary is still pretty much insignificant.

From the other perspective: they provide, apparently, an invaluable service. While the entire world struggles with keeping the education going, people apparently need Khan Academy 2.5 times as much as they did before. And you think the CEO now deserves less pay than he gets, at the time when we need him more than we ever did before?

Re: Khan Academy requests for donations as their servers are at 250% normal load

#112

Post by vowelless »

JensRex wrote: post #93
cosmodisk wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think his salary should be that you'd feel comfortable to make a donation?

Significantly less. This feels like somebody setting up a GoFundMe to pay off their credit card debt. They paid their CEO an absurd salary, and now they need more money. That sounds like a you-problem.

You really think 800k is “absurd” money for what he does? Boy, I have news for you.

Re: Khan Academy requests for donations as their servers are at 250% normal load

#113

Post by maps7 »

dmayle wrote: post #27

(Replying to a trollish comment, but don't want to push it to the top). There was a comment about the salary that CEO Sal Khan takes, with is over $800,0000 per year. I think Khan Academy is fantastic, and was going to donate until I saw this figure (verified). I think that it's entirely inappropriate to extract that much from the donations.

Do you have a source? I will absolutely not donate if he's making that much. He should sacrifice his entire salary until this is over.

I encourage others not to donate too.

Re: Khan Academy requests for donations as their servers are at 250% normal load

#115

Post by maps7 »

arzel wrote: post #43

Ahh.. Khan Academy.. the usefulness this site provided throughout my middle and high school education. Quite frankly, it literally saved my ass. I've gone ahead and donated $1K.

You just gave Salman Khan gas money for the next few months.

Re: Khan Academy requests for donations as their servers are at 250% normal load

#116

Post by vowelless »

woofie11 wrote: post #74
Crosseye_Jack wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The IT staff also get paid... How very dare them. Go to work and earn a living... It’s disgusting I say. They should do it completely for the love of it. Same goes for those pesky YouTubers. Long story short. If you don’t offer a decent incentive package, you won’t incentivise people to come and take a CEO roll. If you look around you will find that CEO at other charity’s also get paid well.

I worked for a not-for-profit where, 3 years in, we learned the CEO was making as much as everyone else combined for the first year. Guy was also doing minimal work. I got fed up with these things. If Khan either open-licenses the platform, or takes a pay cut to $200,000, I'll donate. If he does neither of those, I'm treating this as a 501(c)3-by-technicality only. It's a good for-profit, mind you, but still a for-pr…

> takes a pay cut to $200,000

That’s less than new grad money at tech companies. It shows you are not serious about your suggestions

Re: Khan Academy requests for donations as their servers are at 250% normal load

#117

Post by mythz »

ipsum2 wrote: post #34
the_pwner224 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This 1m/yr is nothing compared to the impact KA has. It's no longer just a site with videos; it is a huge e-learning platform that is widely used and integrated in schools across the world. Being the CEO of KA must be a lot of work and I think most people would agree is worthy of that level of compensation. Or to put it another way: the government is also a nonprofit organization, but it needs good workers to fulfill…

No one gets in the government gets paid $800k, the highest paid salary is the president, at $400k.

Who gets to fly around on a taxpayer funded private airplane and spends over 249 days on a golf course costing >130M, 1/2 of which is spent at his Mar-a-Lago resort, but that's totally fine because his salary is less than a Non Profits CEO.

Trump doesn't care about salary because that's an irrelevant portion of the income generated from his presidency.

Re: Khan Academy requests for donations as their servers are at 250% normal load

#118

Post by gnomewascool »

threatofrain wrote: post #69
kharak wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, truly terrible that non-profit organisations serving the common good should provide high salaries. Founder and employees should just go into banking, because those guys absolutely deserve their high pay. Imagine, just imagine a society, where doing non-profit could be a valid career option without a disadvantage in the income department. The horror.

But Khan Academy is a non-profit. In a business, the relationships between various parties are structured in a locally rational manner. When someone offers $1000 to a business they expect value back. Khan Academy is soliciting donations, an avenue of human interaction which asks us to suspend this local rationality and instead transact on hope and trust. That's the difference to me between a business transaction and…

But Khan Academy is already providing immense value to students — actually now they're (arguably) providing 150% more value than normally.

Hence, you're not being asked to "transact on hope and trust".

The main difference between donating to KA and a typical business transaction, is that the value of the goods/services provided does not necessarily go to the person providing the payment.

There is an understandable worry about over-payment of executives, but I don't think that the "threat model" is significantly different between for-profits and non-profits. You could argue that in the case of for-profits, competition will weed out companies that over-pay their executives, but internal, corporate politics is likely to trump the market mechanism — at least that's what seems to be happening. As a result, I don't think that it makes sense to excessively harp on executive pay at non-profits you donate to, or at least not more so than you care about the pay of the CEO at a company whose products you buy.

Re: Khan Academy requests for donations as their servers are at 250% normal load

#120

Post by dillonmckay »

toto444 wrote: post #90
mikekchar wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the key here is that most people equate "non-profit" with "charity". The idea is that as much money as possible is used to fund the services provided by the entity. However, there are many businesses run as non-profit entities that are not in it to provide a charity. It's just that the entity of the company is designed to take no profit. Often these entities invest heavily into growth as opposed to taking pro…

Some economists show in the paper linked below that being not for profit can be seen as a commitment for quality since you have removed from the company the incentives to exploit your consumers. Abstract : Entrepreneurs who start new firms may choose not-for-profit status as a means of committing to soft incentives. Such incentives protect donors, volunteers, consumers and employees from ex post expropriation of prof…

I disagree with that. Most US universities are non-profits and use undergrad revenues for real estate development.
Post reply on HN