Ask HN: "So... What happened to the last guy?"

What if you told them, "If I get this position, I'll be expecting a budget between x and y. Does this seem about right?"

I'd definitely ask him, as well as ask to have a look around the facilities/code/whatever. It's not like a non-profit has a bunch of really high-value IP, I would think.

I'd absolutely try to contact my predecessor. Just in case you step in to a catfight or a nasty can of worms, it can only be to your advantage.

Take what you hear with a grain of salt. Trust but verify I think was the motto.

This is not directly related to your question, but as someone who stepped from the corporate world to the non-profit world (medical research center affiliated with university hospital), I can say the pay is lower but the freedom is greater.

I'm more in charge of projects, trusted to make technical decisions and set direction, and seem to get more respect as a practitioner here. Since I was a tech lead on a project in the big corp world, I can contrast the two similar experiences. I'm just more autonomous here.

Downsides include a lack of user trust (previous software devs here tended to be a little tougher for people to deal with and were more prone to saying 'no' to requests). University researcher mindset is historically aimed at having software dev done directly by a research team member rather than trusting a centralized IT team.

Good communication is more critical here. Learning how to express ideas in multiple ways is much more important - I have to be able to both talk over an idea and present a visual display as well. It is also assumed that you will understand a researcher's problem domain rather quickly, which is stressful, but fun. You have to plan for a huge range of IT skills, from the person who can kind of use a browser to the self-taught SQL expert who I probably should just add to my team directly.

Talk to him, recognizing that you may be getting a very jaded opinion. Also, I think it's a perfectly relevant question for you to ask for a ballpark dollar amount of your budget and what they expect you to accomplish. I've intentionally stayed away from positions where it looked like I was going to be a "team" of one doing work that really needs 5 or 6 people to be done right. I think this is a similar situation.

Absolutely. At the very least this guy will help you read between the lines and act as a good gut-check to your interview experience.

I would reiterate what Tom_B said about greater responsibility but I think it should be noted the kind of non-profit he worked at. Depending on organization, its mission, and people non-profits can be no better than the corporate machine.

Talking to the former director would lend some valuable insight into the culture and what its "really" like on the day-to-day.

I'd honestly ask yourself whether you're willing to walk away from an offer if what the guy says is bad. If you are than talk with the guy. If not than I wouldn't.

Because he's going to be bitter. So you're going to learn a lot of bad stuff about the place you're starting at. That's a disadvantage in itself (because you might develop his prejudices and run his old enemies the wrong way).

So if you aren't prepared to walk away than you're just torturing yourself with the information and making yourself less effective at a time when you need to be at your best (a.k.a. the beginning of your new job)

Yes, you should absolutely contact the predecessor. It is good corporate diligence and failing to do so would be a bad decision on your part.

Have a script put together of what you are going to ask; - Start with an overview. - Allow them to back away if they feel uncomfortable about a question. - Get a feel for what really went on. - I agree with Jacquesm - take it with a grain of salt.

15 minutes on the phone with the individual will put you six months ahead if you take the position, or provide insight as to why you should pass.

To me, not getting a forthright answer (even after 'further prying') is a big red flag on its own.

At this point, I would wait until you received the offer, and then say something like "Look, unless there's a legal reason why you can't give me a full explanation of what happened, I'm going to need to know the whole story here. We're going to all be working very closely together and I need to understand how the company makes key decisions like budgeting before I make a decision to join you." If you still don't get a clear explanation, I'd think very carefully about taking the job - there's landmines under the surface you know nothing about.

Always try to get in touch with the other person. You are already listening to a biased voice (the emplyoer), listening to the other one is the least you can do for your career.

My two cents: companies check references on their prospective employees. The ethical ones ask you for a list and claim to contact only them; the unethical ones will contact anybody they please.

Your contacting the ex-employee is you checking up on the employer's references. To keep it completely above board, you should ask the org. for a list of references to check up the job. And if they don't list the previous guy, ideally, you shouldn't contact him. But be prepared for no offer irrespective of what they answer. :)

W/o more info, I can pretty much assume that the previous director was the one who had unrealistic expectations (i.e., wanted to spend too much). :)

Assuming that your predecessor acted in a professional manner, then I would probably contact the individual after I'd had a chance to take a look at how everything had been laid out.

Non-profits may not have a lot of money for technology, and the recent economic disruptions have really hit them hard due to the drop in funds they get from corporate/other giving.

I would expect to run into a lot of older equipment all duct-taped together in a non-logical fashion. This isn't something that you should blame the predecessor for, sometimes we have to make non-optimal choices given the constraints we work under.

As an aside about working in the non-profit sector, I've been employed as the only IT person for a smaller nonprofit (~30 users or so) for almost 4 years. You may have heard the phrase "the smaller the stakes the more fierce the fight" from academia, it also holds true in the non-profit world. (and I suspect in any human organization, but my experience has been mostly in the academic/non-profit sector thus far.) Expect to run into budget issues, and nasty personalities.

Fortunately, on the budget front organizations exist for IT software/hardware giving that can really help out.

One that I've used: TechSoup.org

Many major software vendors offer discounts for non-profits if you look around.

Plus you can always use linux/freebsd/openbsd/etc on commodity hardware to help keep costs down. At the cost of time depending on your skill set.

I expect you may have already heard a lot or all of the above, so feel free to ignore it!

Oh, and if you get the job, Congratulations!

Of course you should contact him, and/or anyone else you can reach that has relevant information for you.

I wouldn't ask him for inside dirt on the HR admin's tryst in the conference room, but questions about the job, the organization, and the people are charge are certainly fair game. Unless they are trying to hide something or lie to you, and in that case, it is still the right thing to do for you to investigate.

People seem to have this belief that potential employer or employee should only contact a small subset of officially sanctioned information channels. A prospective employer shouldn't do something like call your current boss with reference questions without your opinion, and similarly you shouldn't seek information from sources that might put the employer at risk.

Take whatever knowledge you gain from contacting him and weigh that against what they have told you. Go back to them and be upfront, tell them the former employee told you X,Y,Z and that you'd like to get their response. A good organization will respect your thoroughness. A bad org will panic and be defensive, and that should be considered as well.

Well, I'm going to be the dissenting voice.

I agree that they should give you better guidance as to your budget before you accept the position.

As for contacting your predecessor, I wouldn't bother. You're not going to get an honest answer out of anybody; everything said about the other will be heavily influenced by the "breakup".

I'll summarize what happened: your predecessor picked a fight, and lost. Leave it at that. The specifics may not be the least bit relevant, won't change what you're going to have to do, and will likely taint your views of your coworkers.

Go in with a clean slate, and make the job your own. Maybe you'll need to pick the same fight. Maybe not. Why worry about it, when you're sure to have plenty of immediate problems.

And again, I would expect better budget guidance before accepting, regardless.

I have a client that's a non-profit. They've got the best IT infrastructure I've ever seen. Non-profit does not always imply limited budgets. That said, is the organization in question a charity? If it's a charity, then keep in mind that most try to only spend a maximum of 25 cents of every donated dollar on "administrative overhead" (http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm/bay/content.view/c...). You can do some back-of-the-napkin calculations. If the budget's $1M, they're spending $250K on administrative overhead. If there are 4 salaries, that leaves you with $50K (based on $50K salary for each employee) for non-salary expenses. You'll get a fraction of that for your IT budget.

I'd do this speculative estimate in addition to contacting the former guy. It might provide some context.

You'll need to find out what your budget is sooner or later. And you might find that "an interesting challenge" means building everything from used desktop computers. As long as that's inline with your expectations, you should be fine.

Regarding whether you should contact the former IT director: to put it in two words:

Of course.

You will spend eight hours every day at that place, you want to gather as much information as you can. Naturally you have to filter/sort/disregard, but that is the next step.

I don't see the need to talk to him.

For one thing, it sounds like your satisfaction there will boil down to your personal agenda. If you are trying to build a world-class IT shop, you'll struggle. If you are trying to help the non-profit do their work, which will clearly entail sacrifices in IT, you'll be fine.

Also, if further prying did not give more info, then they expect you to make decisions based on what they told you. If you need more info, you may have differences in communication styles that will lead to problems down the road.

You should definitely contact him, unless you would be willing to quit almost right away if they start jerking you around somehow; which I don't think would be a good idea.

Several commenters have said you should take what he says with a grain of salt; You should take anything anybody says with a grain of salt, even if you think they are being completely aboveboard, you could be wrong, and you don't know what kinds of incentives and conflicts may be influencing them. And you should be alert for honest misunderstandings as well.

By all means possible talk to the "last guy". Then take what he says with a grain of salt. Both the employer and employee will have very different perspectives about the split. You are the sole judge as to whether it's a warning sign.

Personally, I think that the danger sign are the words "Non-Profit" which in turn means "No Money" which is what you pretty much learnt in the interview. In my experience, unless you can routinely "Turn water into wine" you are going to struggle getting funding for anything and don't expect to get paid on time either. Cashflow or rather its absence makes for "challenges".

Putting aside all the technical and financial considerations, do you passionately believe in the goals and mission statement of this organization? Only if your passion is total would I recommend taking the job, anything less and you'll be looking for an exit strategy within the year if not sooner.