SILICON SUMMER
So I’m seventeen and a senior. I’ve only driven a car once in my life and have barely even started applying to colleges. But I’ve already done work that impacts the lives of millions of people right now.
34 D ELBARTON TODAY
I first got involved with Sal's work in July last year. I was facing a summer without anything to do. One night, I was up late, and an online video interview with Sal came up on some blog. I'd heard of Khan Academy before but hadn't looked into it much. I watched the interview, and I was instantly hooked on Sal's vision; I decided to help. Contributing to software projects has a uniquely low barrier; you just write the code and send it in. I’d had a good amount of coding experience from before, although I had never taken a computer science class in my life. I could have been a little intimidated, starting on a project with professional programmers, but I figured that I would just dive in and adapt. My first contribution to Khan Academy was a print button, so users could view the next few problems and print them out to do on paper. I sent it in to Sal’s tiny volunteer development team, which made me confirm that my employer wouldn’t hold the copyright. After that patch, I began sending more and more code and feedback to Sal and his friends. I added new practice exercises in math and physics to go with Sal's videos. I became, in the words of one contributor, “the module Jedi.” At that time last summer, Khan Academy was in its infancy. Sal had been making videos for a couple of years, but he’d only recently seen enough traction to quit his job. Khan Academy didn't really have an office, and it didn't have any employees besides Sal. I fit well into this rapidly growing venture: while Sal made videos, I could lead the development of more and more exercises. After only a few days of contributions, Sal took notice, and we were talking on the phone. His first question was if I had a job or a wife, since I was able to spend so much time volunteering! He was stunned to find out that I was a teenager. I learned from him that no one besides me had ever bothered to add new practice material before. Over the next few months, I made tons of new exercises whenever I had the time. I tweaked and tuned parts of the exercise system itself, and I became the resident expert on it.
When other people submitted new exercises, they would usually undergo review from me before we launched them. Meanwhile, Sal started to hire full-time employees, and together we formed a small, focused team. In February, I made some last-minute fixes to make the exercise software work properly on most people's computers. Soon after that fix, Sal demonstrated our software at the TED conference. Today, that talk has been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people online. When I saw Sal on the TED stage alongside Bill Gates, receiving a standing ovation, I finally realized the sheer scale of what I was involved in. After a few weeks, I found myself with a lot of free time during spring break. Naturally, I channeled it into my volunteer work at Khan Academy. One day, Sal’s partner offered me a job for the summer. I would come to their office in Mountain View, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. They would pay me,