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Google's First Employee Departs
redletterdave writes "Craig Silverstein, the first employee hired by Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, will leave the search giant for Khan Academy, an online education portal based in Mountain View, Calif. Silverstein had been with Google shortly after it first launched in the garage of Susan Wojcicki, a friend of both Page and Brin, in September 1998. He had helped Brin and Page develop infrastructure when Google was just a Stanford grad school project, but when he officially joined the company, Silverstein became its technology director. The Khan Academy, where Silverstein is heading next, is a not-for-profit organization that aspires to change the education industry by providing free 'world-class education to anyone anywhere.' Microsoft chairman Bill Gates is an enormous fan of the service, telling CNN that he uses it with his kids."
Obligatory.
Craig is good egg who walks the walk. Not hungry for power, glory or money, he already has enough of all that. The original Google do-gooder. I sincerely hope that his shoes do not prove too big to fill.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
I'm guessing he has enough money to last him several lifetimes by now. Good to see people that will work for non-profit at that point.
Netscape search site perhaps.
All the cool kids used Alta Vista.
Now looking for a Google replacement.
If you can tough it out for a bit... My plan is to wait a few more years (for shit to really hit the fan) and then introduce a search engine that's a simple form on a page.
It's going to be huge.
I wish I was being sarcastic. :(
Where do you jump to when you already work for one of the biggest companies on the planet and are richer than Midas?
It took him 14 years to find a job he wanted more than the one he had. If only we were all so lucky.
The code for Khan Academy uses Google Code and runs on Google App Engine so he should at least have a passing familiarly with the technology stack that his new company uses :-)
Source: http://www.brianbondy.com/blog/id/109/
Khan Academy doesn't stop at K-12. There's plenty of college level material there.
I'm sure he'll get back to you as soon as he has eradicated AIDS and cured cancer.
Sincerely,
Mr GetYourPrioritiesInOrder Esq.
Before Google, I used Altavista.
I am afraid that Google is a proof of the axiom that all power corrupts. While not seeing them as totally evil, the fact of being huge and rich has distorted their vision so that they cannot see the dark side of the things that they do, I think they still mean well, they think that they are "doing no evil". But their view is so distorted by the point that they are looking from that they have lost touch with what ordinary people think. They are so intent on open information that they cannot understand why people, quite honourably and innocently, want too keep some information private to themselves.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
No one is stopping people from making a personal choice about the software they use. No one is forcing people to use MS Office.
All the cool kids used Alta Vista.
You weren't one of them. We used Asta la Vista
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
And your alternative is what?
Don't just complain and whine about unfair taxes, tell me what you would propose that would be better for education. Keep in mind that you have a diverse population of children ranging from very well off to homeless. I would hope you want every child to have some education, because you would believe that an educated nation is a strong nation.
Please, provide a workable plan to educate our youth that does not include some social sharing of cost. Here at /. you'd get some great feed back and perhaps it can be presented to the President for consideration.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
All the cool kids used Alta Vista.
I used to use Alta Vista as my main search engine, back when they supported boolean queries (the "NEAR" keyword!). When they dropped that capability, I abandoned them. Google didn't really become better than Alta Vista. Alta Vista became worse than Google.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Evil compared to what? Mother Theresa and Ghandi perhaps, but compared to Facebook and the worst of the worst that is Microsoft they are still saints.
Actually, I'd class Google as a saint compared to Mother Teresa, who believed that suffering was good, and ensured it was widespread in her "hospices", and publicly stated that poverty should not be alleviated because it also was a good thing.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I remember when Alta Vista came out with natural language searches. You could ask it What's the name of President Clinton's cat? And it would give you links for where to buy socks.
Indeed! it used to be great. Before they went all out commercial.
I can't wait for you to leave slashdot.
People have such ridiculously selective memories about Alta Vista. Yes, it was once awesome, but it sucked because it had no search algorithm, it just matched keywords. This worked fine at first, but people (and by people I mean porn sites) pretty quickly learned that all it took to game the system was to put huge blocks of tiny text at the bottom of every page containing every keyword they could think of. Pretty soon, it didn't matter what you searched for, you got back the same 10 porn sites. So yes, Google became better than Alta Vista, because they figured out a system that was at least marginally difficult to game.
I'd class Google as a saint compared to Mother Teresa, who ...
The new Reverend Dr Hyde I presume.
It was. Now is a two-man show.
Maybe on your planet. On my planet, everyone assumes and uses MS Office files. My battle is down to trying to get people to use 2007 (doc/xls/etc) files, because not all of my computers have new MS Office installed. And even that battle is being lost. I could swear that new PowerPoint purposely makes "compatible" saves bloated and damages things (formulas/animations) in conversion.
I dare you to start responding "I've chosen to use open software" to every MS Office attachment you see in your inbox. See if you can last more than an hour before you are forced to use MS Word/Excel/Powerpoint.
This guy is leaving for a good cause and all, but I've noticed a pattern of Google employees leaving lately. Even newer recruits don't seem to stay long. I wonder if they've taken the fun out of working there? Obviously, something has changed. It can't be the computing problems, because they still have huge challenges.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
"Don't just complain and whine about unfair taxes, tell me what you would propose that would be better for education. Keep in mind that you have a diverse population of children ranging from very well off to homeless. I would hope you want every child to have some education, because you would believe that an educated nation is a strong nation."
You have the RIGHT to an educaton.
You have the RIGHT to PAY for that education.
You do NOT have the right to free education.
"I would hope you want every child to have some education,"
Sure, BUT you best be prepared to PAY FOR IT! I've heard all this "education nation is a strong nation." Education is good, its just not a free ride that has no cost. Good schools cost $$$$. I went to one of the top 2 HS in my state, and the property taxes for the school were 3-4x that of the neighboring districts. Hiring, your not even in the running unless you had or were in a Masters program. There were more Doctorates teaching everything from Kindergarten to AP Calculus, than most of the surrounding districts had in total COMBINED. Getting a job at this district was like hitting the lotto jackpot, they got the top of the top of the top of the top of teaching canidates be it fresh from school or other districts. and they paid very well, top of the list for the area. People purchased homes in this area, just so they could send their deliquents to this district. And homes were not cheap, and still are not cheap, even for homes 30-40 years old. Simply because of the schools.
Why should *I* pay to educate YOUR CHILD? ? Rule #1, don't tell me about the benefit to soceity mumbo jumbo. You chose to have a child, YOU PAY for their needs, and that includes education! What you want me to pay for your food too! The whole process is totally un-American in the way it taxes everyone child or not, I would expect something like this in some Socialist or Communist country.
Can't afford the tuition to the local district, parochial, or private, then home school.
School districts should work the same as private and parochial. If the budget for the school is $x, and there are y students,then $x/y =$tuition. Period.
What happens when the community has no kids to go to the local district. Shutdown.
What happens as the number children decreases, cuts in staff, pay, building closures, sell buildings, tuition increases. What about sports.. you want to be in x sports, this is the fee, same goes for cheerleaders, pantherettes, majorettes, band, choir, glee club, Key Club, etc..
The area I am talking about, has NO BUSINESS base for taxes, its 95% homes, there are few office building complexes, and a few business that existed before the community plan was changed, there are no business districts. The main road through the area is 4 lanes, major north south artery, and when you get to this community the businesses that lined the road in the previous community, instantly disappear, and don't reappear till you get to the next community. Its done intentionally, by design. Its strictly a residential community.
Having kids has repercussions, and COSTS. None of which should I bear, when I chose not to have kids.
1311393600 - Back to Black
http://www.khanacademy.org/about/the-team
Khan uses the oldest educational technique in the book- the demonstration lecture. Its just packaged better. First someone who clearly explains it. Second in a right-length chunk of a few minutes, not a forced 60 minutes. And on demand, anywhere, not on a schedule at a certain location. And almost free, after it is done the first couple of times.
People have been trying a half century to properly use television and computers in education. This seems to be one of the better results.
I got an interview with Google in 1999, and I had the opportunity to have lunch with Craig. He never mentioned to me that he was the 1st employee at the time.
I do remember what he asked me. I was interviewing for the job of initializing their QA department. He asked me how I would look for problems in an indexer that stored MILLIONS (ha) of pages. I had to ask what exactly an indexer was.
On the way out, I spent too much time flirting with the hot red head they had at the front desk, and Larry walked by and saw what I was doing. I don't think that's why I didn't get the job though.
DAMMMMMNN I wish I got that job!!!!!!!!
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
There. Fixed that for you. No, seriously. I'm not kidding.
You can either help pay for the lower classes to be educated, or you can deal with the consequences of having large numbers of uneducated unemployable people, and all the social problems that come with that. Which do you really think is better for you?
I choose not to have kids either. But I understand that I'm going to be a lot better off if the youth I have to deal with in the future are in school and not on the streets. If I send them to school now, I can live off of their tax dollars later. If I don't send them to school now, I'll be paying for their incarceration into the foreseeable future.
Investing in the society in which you live is a rational self-interested decision.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
And please, do not say, "what good did it do?" Compared to 50 or 100 years ago, Americans are far better educated. The decline we perceive is mainly a factor of 1) relative comparisons to the rest of the world and 2) the inclusion of a higher percentage of the population in modern testing. There were no good old days.
+9000 Insightful. It's never cheaper when you pay reactively rather than proactively.
It may not be fair that your neighbor has 5 kids, but taking care of that problem as a society is another (complicated) issue. Having the children turn to crime or starve is not an acceptable solution for me. But continuing to allow people to irresponsibly breed is also not working. Parents are now children themselves, and having 2 parents (of any sex) is a luxury most children do not have. Even with 2 parents, many cannot afford to feed the mouths they have created.
Could the government insist that everyone receiving welfare funds be either sterilized or on birth control? That would be a tough fight. Could the government *reduce* funding for each new child rather than increase it? Another tough fight.
I'd love to hear a solution that considers where we are headed and how it can be changed... the current system is broken and rewards those who breed irresponsibly by placing the burden on those of us who are careful and intelligent. The movie "Idiocracy" comes to mind.
She believed that pain was a good thing and poverty should not be eliminated? That's not exactly unsaintlike. Maybe a bit more pessimistic than many of us comparatively wealthy and healthy would want to admit to ourselves, but I imagine that dealing with the sick and dying every day would make one re-evaluate the human condition.
As far as not giving out painkillers in her hospitals, maybe she should have, but I think it's hard to make the case that she was providing something worse than the alternative. I don't think it's fair to say "This person was trying to do something good, but she should have been doing it better, so it's not good."
But continuing to allow people to irresponsibly breed is also not working.
The birth rate in most developed countries is decreasing. Not because of any policy mandate, but because the people choose it. We need to figure out what they're doing and copy it.
What they're doing is educating their people, and providing opportunities for them. Educated people have fewer children. Moderately well off people have fewer children.
What we're doing in the US is the exact opposite. We're cutting education, we're expanding economic opportunities for the rich and not the lower classes. And when 30 years of ever increasing inequality bear fruit in social problems, conservatives will blame the very people they refused to help.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
US education should be soley tuition based.
Please name me one country where this works.
You have the RIGHT to an educaton.
You have the RIGHT to PAY for that education.
You do NOT have the right to free education.
Poor people have the right to education. Poor people are not able to pay for education. Therefore, poor people -- at least -- have the right to free education. QED.
(+1, Disagree)