Thank you Khan Academy, switching careers

Today is my last day at Khan Academy (KA). At just over a year, it was much less time than I’d like to have spent at KA. In the end though, I feel like it’s not the amount of time that you spend at a company that matters, but the impact that you made.

I don’t regret one second of my time here, nor do I regret the decision to go to KA.

Over the past year I’ve had the chance to work with some amazing people. Coming in, I was primarily a C++ developer with some JS and Python experience. Thanks to KA, today I think I’m just as strong in JS, and Python now.

Some of the impactful moments I had during the year includes:

• As a hackweek project, created an environment for learning SQL which Pamela Fox has now created a full course for.
• Was a large part of making KA’s CS environment not JS specific but able to handle multiple languages.
• Co-authord an environment for learning HTML and CSS with John Resig, Pamela Fox, and Alex Rodrigues.
• Along with Colin Fuller, lead the development of LearnStorm - A very successful Google funded Bay Area math competition.
• Lead development for a peer evaluations environment (code review feature) for Khan Academy CS users.
• As a 3 day hackathon project, created an autosuggest code editor feature for programs on KA’s CS platform.
• Suggested and implemented an automated end-to-end testing framework in under 2 weeks which is used during each deploy today.
• Sole primary developer for a 5 out of 5 star Firefox OS Khan Academy app as a side project which is still ongoing.
• Was the developer lead for a team to work on various tasks to improve user satisfaction.
• Totalling around 700 code commits, implemented various other general fixes, SEO fixes, discussion fixes, GAE integration, and privacy work.

What will I be doing? I’ll be working my butt off pursuing a startup that I’m co-founding.

Thank you Khan Academy for an amazing experience. If anyone is thinking of joining KA, I’d highly encourage it. It’s easily one of the most developer friendly, culturally perfect, fun, intrinsically motivating, and open place to work.