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

khanacademy.org

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

#91

Post by Crosseye_Jack »

tasogare wrote: post #55
Crosseye_Jack wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why not talk about the IT staff? You want their site to run to well right? You want some decent site reliability engineers right? Well you might find some that will do the job for less then they can earn for the same role in the for-profit world, you are still going to have to pay a decent wage for their skill and let’s be honest here so they can continue to live in a comfort they have become accustomed too. The…

Then let's talk about the IT staff. What is their salary? How many of them the "non-profits" could hire if their CEO had a more decent salary? The organizations we are speaking about are very loud to beg for money yet they spend a large part of it on overpaying a few execs. This is very different from companies that earn their money without asking the public for money.

Quick random google search.

Software engineer Google - Average total compensation: $144,652 (ok written in 2014, like I said it was a quick google search - https://www.infoworld.com/article/3304439/man-or-myth-the-3-... ) Software engineer Khan - Average total compensation: $119,140/yr - https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salary/Khan-Academy-Salaries-E45...

So not that much different to those in similar fields in the similar area.

So if the CEO took a 50% pay cut they could hire and extra 3-4 engineers a year. But that’s just straight salary costs and the cost of staff isn’t just the salary cost.

But that argument can be said of any charity, non-profit, business, school, hospital. “If only the top surgeon took a 50% pay cut, think of all the extra nurses we could hire...”

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

#92

Post by cosmodisk »

srazzaque wrote: post #85
cameronbrown wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not. If you don't pay the best, you'll get lower quality teachers and developers.

There's something to this. Maybe you won't get the most altruistic people, but you'll absolutely get a higher quality cut of the workforce. I've heard that the Singaporean government has a similar philosophy. Their prime minister is one of the (if not, the) highest paid PM in the world at circa SGD $2m/year.

Looking purely at the stats,I'd say they deserve it.Also,the PM and the cabinet had substantial cuts to their salaries some years ago,which was initiated by the PM himself.

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

#93

Post by JensRex »

cosmodisk wrote: post #88
JensRex wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try arguing with less snark. Every comment like yours attacks the strawman that the CEO and employees should not get paid. Nobody is saying that. But I'm absolutely not going to donate anything while the CEO takes out over 800000 dollars in pay, and it looks distasteful to me to go around begging for donations.

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.

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

#94

Post by keiferski »

discordance wrote: post #15

Worthy internet causes: Khan Academy, Wikipedia and Electronic Frontier Foundation Any other suggestions?

"The Public Domain Review is dedicated to the exploration of curious and compelling works from the history of art, literature, and ideas – focusing on works now fallen into the public domain, the vast commons of out-of-copyright material that everyone is free to enjoy, share, and build upon without restrictions."

https://publicdomainreview.org

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

#95

Post by yomly »

hnarn wrote: post #86
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.

> Imagine, just imagine a society, where doing non-profit could be a valid career option without a disadvantage in the income department. The horror. I don't feel like I should have to explain this, but the difference between a non-profit and a profit driven corporation is that: 1) The NPO is likely doing some kind of activity for the greater good, which means that the more money you take out for administration and p…

Right, but this mentality leads to greater good type causes to require martyrs amongst other types of people. A failure mode of this is brain drain - see most civil service jobs in the west or NHS doctors in the UK. Additionally can create brain drain which the beleaguers the original cause.

I guess you can see personnel as an investment towards the cause too

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

#96

Post by kharak »

hnarn wrote: post #86
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.

> Imagine, just imagine a society, where doing non-profit could be a valid career option without a disadvantage in the income department. The horror. I don't feel like I should have to explain this, but the difference between a non-profit and a profit driven corporation is that: 1) The NPO is likely doing some kind of activity for the greater good, which means that the more money you take out for administration and p…

Strongly disagree. The more money is in being part of a NPO, the more talent will go into NPOs. Hence, your first point 1) isn't as clear-cut as you make it out to be.

Right now, if I'd want to work for a NPO, it would only come with a severe pay cut. So I stay with FPOs, although I believe that many NPOs are way more important in what they are doing.

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

#97

Post by op03 »

kiba wrote: post #19
op03 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of link to vid replace it (or place side by side) with link to torrent (probably with a note about torrent clients the same way Kiwix does). The rest of the platform can still be used as is. Most people will just click and download will be pretty quick (most vids are quite small).

Video doesn't cost them anything. It's hosted on youtube anyway. It's the rest of the stuff that costs them money.

Ah ok then torrents don't make much sense.

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

#98

Post by hd4 »

sim_card_map wrote: post #14
op03 wrote: post #2

Would moving to torrents reduce the load? Kiwix seems to able to distribute offline wikipedia stackoverflow etc that way - https://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Content_in_all_languages

They can also move from Python.

Agreed. I wish more companies/nonprofits/whatever would make better decisions early on about their infrastructure, or at least gradually graft in better tooling over time.

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

#99

Post by lotsofpulp »

onei wrote: post #66
animalnewbie wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was a hotshot stock broker who would be making 10 times that. 0.8m isbarely respectful for him.

To me that speaks more about the wage disparity between normal folks and those working on Wall Street, etc. No one needs that much money, and someone willing to take such a pay cut yet still be well above the average only exposes that truth.

It’s not a mystery that “normal folks’” work output doesn’t scale and is limited by time, whereas tech/math/science related work output scales with almost no marginal costs so it’s worth much more money per hour of labor.

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

#100

Post by inimino »

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…

> When someone offers $1000 to a business they expect [...]

> [...] transact on hope and trust.

These two things are not as dissimilar as you seem to think.

There is nothing irrational about donating to a non-profit, and nothing irrational about paying high salaries to irreplaceable employees or executives.

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