Google's First Employee Departs 137
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."
Great run, Craig (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
If he is the Tech behind Google (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Slow to Grow? (Score:5, Insightful)
It took him 14 years to find a job he wanted more than the one he had. If only we were all so lucky.
Re:Free advice for big fan of free learning! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Great run, Craig (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
He was part of a force that changed the internet. Now's he's joining Kahn to help change the world of education (except now he has a lot more clout and a lot more resources). Let's hope he can have a significant impact.
Re:Free??? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Bill Gates has kids? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Bill Gates has kids? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Free??? (Score:2, Insightful)
"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.
No, doing 3,000 year old schools better (Score:5, Insightful)
People have been trying a half century to properly use television and computers in education. This seems to be one of the better results.
Re:Free??? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Free??? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Free??? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.