Is Salman Khan (of Khan Academy) paid too high a salary?

[Quora Feeds]

Ahmed Balfaqih

In my opinion, that is too low.
Compare the work and social good he and his colleagues are doing in the world to some CEOs of public listed companies who drove their companies to bankruptcy or laid off thousands of employees and see how their compensations were. Then you will realize that he is paid too little.
Many of KA employees could have worked or stayed working in any big company such as Google or Facebook and received similar salaries and big stock options, but they decided to join him and contribute. In order to attract such talents, the pay has to be the same or better.
My two cents as someone who also donates.


See Questions On Quora

Continue reading...

 

[Quora Feeds]

Paul Lopushinsky

For all that he's done, it's far too low. However, it's clear to him that it's not the point of what he is going for. The value that his company provides is many times greater than what he's paid for.
That said, he clearly isn't in it for the money, but for the contribution, and that's inspiring.


See Questions On Quora

Continue reading...

 

[Quora Feeds]

Shava Nerad

As a former nonprofit administration consultant, let me settle this with metrics.
This is about 1.5% of revenues.
Is the Salary of an Executive Director of a Non-Profit a Percentage of the Budget?
This is at the low end of industry standard for a nonprofit this size.
"... large major nonprofits with budgets in the tens of millions sometimes use a percentage from 1 to 2.5 percent."
===
And you know, I was going to leave it at that, but after a couple days I'm going to say more.
You think your $50 a year that you give to KA is paying for Sal's caviar. Well, guess what. Sal's negotiating 15,000 speaking fees at conferences is paying for his salary. Stop being envious and certainly stop worrying that he's hurting the organization.
He is the person out there bringing in close to his salary in speaking fees every year (if you look at their tax returns). Every one of those speaking engagements brings in more money in donations and grants. It also brings in volunteers and in-kind donations.
Are you starting to catch my drift? He makes his money back for the group, and then he essentially leverages probably a lion's share of the tens of millions of dollars of fundraising based on his outreach and name.
You don't have to worry about KA's fiscal health, Sal's integrity, or what your money is going to.
Now, you can be freaking petty about it, and be envious and jealous. You can ignore that he gave up a quiet life he loved as a teacher and has no fixed home, and lives out of hotels, and never sees his friends for more than two weeks at a time, or really gets to enjoy a settled life. That he uses that money to fly home on weekends from where ever it is that KA has him speaking during the week at a conference so he can do his laundry and go to the next education conference.
It may sound glamorous, but it really is a drag if you do it all the time. Most of us are introverts. We give up our privacy, our quiet lives, our private opinions on anything (because anything we say in public reflects on the organization we lead -- I only got my own voice back in retirement).
And people question your integrity all the time, just because you are a public figure. They dehumanize you. They are willing to think horrible things about you because you are somehow a celebrity, or famous, when you are the same person you were when you started.
People are so willing to believe that good people are doing bad things, it makes me insane.
If Sal were working at IBM as the head of instructional technology he'd be making just as much, probably much more.
For the person who said he worked for a non-profit for nothing, gosh -- I bet you had a day job. If you didn't you had someone supporting you, or you're independently wealthy. You didn't have to travel internationally twice a week either. And you are choosing to live modestly and that's fine. There's nothing wrong with living at a modest income.
But there's nothing wrong with living on more, if you are bringing it in, either.
And Sal is not doing this on your small donations. He is bringing in considerably more than this under his own name.
So stop it.
For a small nonprofit, the standard for executive director salary is no more than 10-15% of income. It's only because Sal is such a good fundraiser and KA is doing so well that his income is only 1.5% of their total budget.
In 2013, fourty-two private colleges (educational nonprofits, right?) had presidents that made over twice what Sal makes, and oddly, I don't think anyone is freaking out and saying no one should donate to them.
The Highest Paid Private College Presidents
Really you people should be ashamed of yourselves, harassing a guy who is doing such a phenomenally good job. Being a nonprofit administrator does not come with holy orders and an oath of poverty. It only comes with the assurance that you will not have any equity in the social enterprise you build.
Your donations go to making sure that the videos are terrific, and get to everyone they should, in the way you've come to expect. KA is special.
Sal runs on the speaking fees and a bit of the grants and donations, most of which come in because people know who he is and what his organization does for the world.
Let him do what he does best. He deserves to be paid like one of the top college administrators in the world -- don't you think? He's one of the top innovators in education in our time, in many ways.
Be his alumni.


See Questions On Quora

Continue reading...

 

[Quora Feeds]

Gregory Bambo

Most people have a profound misunderstanding of what constitutes a conflict of interest.
Conflicts of interest only arise in specialized circumstances. One must be a fiduciary, which is anyone another rightfully reposed reliance on (though non-legal persons will interpret this definition as much broader than it is meant to be interpreted as). Then one must be put in an actual situation of having a personal interest that is opposed to the interest of one's charge (the person one owes a fiduciary duty to). The conflict arises because a fiduciary is obligated to act on his charge's best interest regardless of his own best interest.
There are some limited cases that are unavoidable that do not result in a recognized conflict of interest. For example, being paid hourly and having the self-interest of being paid more, creating on one side an interest in more billable hours and on the other side an interest in fewer billable hours.
The fact that Khan Academy is non-profit is of no interest in this case. Many people are suspicious when non-profits pay competive salaries. But this is the only way to secure a reliable source of permanent competent employees. And as many have noted, they may pay high salaries, but rarely truly comparable to the corporate world. The charitable aims of non-profits do not impose a charitable aim on its employees. Charities are not like the Catholic Church with a vow of poverty.
Moreover, when a conflict exists, there are different solutions according to the degree of conflict. The are (1) withdraw/resign, (2) arrange for a non-conflicted party to exercise oversight, or (3) advise client of the existence of the conflict and have them waive it.
Khan Academy is free to students, but that does not prevent a fiduciary status from arising. But the case law is clear, student-teacher is not a fiduciary relationship.
Khan's duty to donors is merely to conduct the Academy lawfully and consistent with his representations them. Unless he has represented he does not make $500K, he is free to make $500K. Donor-donee is not a fiduciary relationship.
Khan does have a fiduciary duty owed to the Academy, but the inherent conflict in his wanting a high salary and the Academy wanting to pay a low salary is unavoidable and thus not cognizable as a conflict of interest.
Meanwhile, a classic example of a true conflict of interest follows for clarification.
If you buy insurance, you obtain legal representation for any court action that involves a covered liability. Crash your car into Ms Smith and, when she sues, the insurance company will provide defense counsel (usually an employee or long-term outside contractor, who often works exclusively for them). Now your insurance company is a fiduciary towards you. And there duty under the policy is to settle the claim. Of course the insurance company has no duty to pay beyond policy limits. So if you have $1M in coverage and Ms Smith has a credible claim of $3M in damages, there is a $2M uninsured claim pending. Now remember that the fiduciary duty of the insurer carries a duty to act in you best interest even when it runs against their best interest.
Here, the insurance company has a self-interest of concluding there involvement in the case, as litigation is costly. They could just pay $1M on day one and walk away if they were not fiduciaries. But being fiduciaries they have the further duty of selflessness to try and get a release of all claims so as to extinguish the uninsured $2M pending claim. But can we trust them to do that given the conflicting interests above and the fact that the litigation occurs largely out of sight of the insured? The courts have ruled the correct resolution is (2) above. In this situation, that means they have to hire a second attorney that they have to pay for, but who only represents you and who has no concern for the insurance company. His role is largely oversight though, as the duty to defend owed by the insurer is not diminished by his presence.


See Questions On Quora

Continue reading...

 

[Quora Feeds]

Tara Sotelo

Man, look. Anyone that can dumb that stuff down to a level that I can understand can have all of the money. Who knows...maybe even HE can help the anti-vaxxers understand how vaccines work. And research. Probably not, because facts.
I work in a job that can never make enough money for what I do (I'm a nurse. The "icky" kind). Then there's whoever invented Candy Crush. He's probably bathing in a platinum bathtub and I'm paying way too much for a roach-infested dump in Silicon Valley.
Life's tough...wear a helmet.


See Questions On Quora

Continue reading...

 

[Quora Feeds]

Rony Gao

In addition to the enormous social impact of Khan Academy and Sal's genuine motivation, I'd remind you that this man was a hedge fund manager before throwing himself onto Khan Academy as his full-time job. Hedge fund managers receive paychecks that often sum up to 7-figures with bonus included. With three degrees from MIT and an MBA from Harvard, Salman Khan would most likely be able to do well in the hedge fund world had he chosen to stay. So a $500,000 salary from Khan Academy merely reimburses about half his opportunity cost of doing what he does.
One more thing to take into consideration is that Khan Academy, one of the most generously funded non-profits organizations, generally pays its employees very competitively in order to attract and retain talents in the Silicon Valley. Sal Khan said in his TED talk that salaries for software engineers at Khan Academy are in the upper quartile in the Bay Area. I personally think that offering competitive salary for high-quality talent is completely justified for a non-profit whose vision is to provide a free world-class education for anyone, anywhere.


See Questions On Quora

Continue reading...