Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login
Ask HN: "So... What happened to the last guy?"
36 points by furyg3 on Jan 13, 2010 | hide | past | favorite | 45 comments
Today I interviewed for an IT Director position at a non-profit development organization. My initial feeling is that there's a better-than-average chance that they'll be offering me a position in the next few days.

I've thought a lot about switching to this sector (that's a whole other post...), and I'm certainly prepared for the salary hit that this will likely involve. I'm also bracing myself for the IT budget, fully expecting that it will be a good source of interesting challenges.

That being said, when I asked "What happened to the last guy?" I received the answer "There was a difference in opinion relating to how much we should spend on IT-related issues." Further prying didn't yield much, and I'd really like to get an idea as to which party had unrealistic expectations.

So my question is: I have an opportunity to make contact with the former IT Director... should I? Would you?

One part of me thinks that information-gathering is always beneficial, but at the same time I may not want this person's personal feelings to bias my own with regards to this new partnership. What would you do?




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.


Just to chime on on the opposite: don't talk to him, because you are nothing like the last guy. Approach everyone without second thoughts, form your own opinions, and convince them of a budget the last guy never dreamed of :) That said, make sure your expectations regarding budgets/output match your employers' expectations, but that has nothing to do with the last guy.


In addition to SwellJoe's point, which I endorse, I'd also add that this is a non-profit. You think profit-making companies treat IT as a cost center? Just wait until you've seen a nonprofit. Consider a non-profit meant to help the homeless; it is a trivial exercise to compute how many meals for the homeless the IT budget is costing you. How do you expect to compete against that? Convincing them that spending a bit more could reduce net costs is going to be an even larger uphill battle, no matter how rationally right you are. (Assuming you are at all right anyhow.)


And even if the management (all the way up to the Executive Director) can see through the fog of their daily firefighting to see the potential of expanded an IT budget to make the overall mission more effective & efficient they often can't shake money loose to do so because their donors insist that their dollars go toward costs directly associated with serving the bottom-line mission of the organization (e.g., to pay for meals served at a soup kitchen); not for organizational "overhead."

Grants exist for tech-oriented projects, but it's very difficult to be adaptive & iterative because the grant life-cycle is measured in years. Not very "agile." Apply for a grant to make an improvement X using technology Y this year. Next year, receive the grant but realize that improving X is no longer relevant or technology Y is no longer optimal and you risk your grant funding by changing course or stay your course and achieve a non-optimal (or irrelevant) goal. Extremely frustrating.

Incentives in the non-profit world (especially for charities & social services) are really skewed because the people paying for the services are not the same people receiving the services, and the demand for services is essentially unlimited.


More information never hurts. Talking to the prior IT guy does no harm, and might do some good, both for OP and for the company he'd be working for. This is not a time for seeking zen enlightenment in just being in the moment with no awareness of the past; learn from others and their past mistakes.


More information never hurts

Of course it does! It biases you in a way which is completely unnecessary - whatever your questions and concerns are, bring them up with the people you will be working. If you aren't comfortable asking direct questions and need to go with a guy who got fired, you shouldn't be in a management position to begin with.


It biases you in a way which is completely unnecessary

If you aren't comfortable asking direct questions and need to go with a guy who got fired, you shouldn't be in a management position to begin with.

If you can't take in multiple opinions and judge the worth of them, then you definitely shouldn't be in any position where you have to interact with people or technology. You also shouldn't be allowed on the Internet, lest you hurt yourself or others with horrible advice.

Your advice here is just so wrong that I can't even reasonably see a way for this to be a devil's advocate kind of position. Ignoring available data before you know which data sources are accurate is foolish. The guy resigned or got fired or whatever; OP only knows the non-technical hiring interviewer's side of the story (and that's filtered through CYA). We don't know that the former IT guy is bitter in ways that would make him an unreliable source of information, you're just assuming he is. We don't know that the hiring interviewer understood anything the former IT guys said, ever, about anything, including why he was dissatisfied; you're just assuming he does.

I don't care anything about the politics and crap that other folks seem to want to bring up. A new IT guy needs to communicate with the old one in order to do a good job. It's not optional. The reason the old IT guy is available to talk is, I assume, because he believes in that professional courtesy even if he doesn't think much of his former employer. I have never left an IT gig without at least a day of knowledge transfer, and any IT guy that would is not fit to do the job.

Have you ever worked in an IT position? Arguing against talking to the old IT guy is like arguing against washing hands. Best practices like these should not be mocked or made light of.


The opinions of a ex-employee are more noise than signal. You're not dating, you're doing a job - make sure expectations match up, and if they do, accept the offer, and do your best. What an ex-employee thinks about the people is completely irrelevant to the job that needs to be done.

Arguing against talking to the old IT guy is like arguing against washing hands

We're not talking about transferring technical know-how - that would be a question of brining him on as a consultant.


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)


To a certain extent, you already inherit his old enemies when you take over his role.


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.


Actually, I was rather surprised with how forthright they were about it. They could have easily said "he left to peruse other opportunities" and not leave me thinking about any budget problems/disagreements, beyond the standard "non-profits don't have a lot of money".

Where I was unclear, and where I didn't get a lot of follow up information, was on what the disagreements were about. Did he think they needed an expensive XYZ hardware solution when he could have done with a cheaper and/or open-source one? Or was the organization requiring him to do the impossible without giving him any resources? It sounded like whatever it was, it was pervasive through their relationship.

My interviewers were non-technical, and so after some prying I decided to save it for our next meeting.


Your interviewers were non-technical but your authority chain (hiring manager?) knows enough about the situation that he/she sent the previous person on his way. They may not know why the guy was asking for so much money but they should be able to tell you how much it was and what he represented as business value for said money.

If you can't get frank, direct honesty from that person I would consider not taking the position. If you can, and your perception is that the previous director was not creative commensurate with the requirements of this type of position, or worse, was an empire builder, then it's probably no problem.


"My interviewers were non-technical, and so after some prying I decided to save it for our next meeting."

Separate from the question of whether you should talk to your predecessor, I'd think you'd want to talk to some of the current technical staff as well before accepting an offer.


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.


Good advice!

I also think you managed to include every cliche and metaphor known to man in that reply:)


That was sort of the point :)

Practicing my language skills.


Then I don't feel rude pointing out that it should be "step into", not "step in to".


"When all's said and done, / at the end of the day / you've got to take the bull by the horns."

(My father actually heard someone say exactly that in a meeting once.)


Funny! In dutch it is possible to talk for 20 minutes in proverbs/sayings, make perfect sense and not repeat a single one.

They're also all untranslatable.

For instance:

He must have been hit by a windmill.

Or:

He has been pulled out of the clay.

In English they make no sense at all.


http://enlavalla.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/brueghel_prover...


Ah so that's what the Fleet Foxes album cover is - http://www.mtv.co.uk/files//library/images/album_covers_2008...

Sorry, off topic.


Amazing how many of them have made it in to modern Dutch / Flemish.


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.


Also worth noting about working in non-profits, if you play your cards right, you can get an awful lot of stuff for free or at a steep discount. Google has been known to give away search appliances (even the big ones) to non-profits, for example. My company gives away free licenses to non-profits (and it's not like we're made of money, it's just how we roll). Most companies have a formal discount process for non-profits.

I'm not familiar with a lot of non-profit IT departments, but the one I am familiar with is very well-equipped, though moderately under-staffed.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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?"


Or how about, "If I get this position, what sort of budget can I expect to be working with and what will I be expected to produce with that budget?"


Yeah, that's better.


What would you base that budget on, without in-depth internal knowledge ?


I was just thinking ballpark, order of magnitude kind of stuff.


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.


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). :)


[deleted]


From the text it seems that he already has the means to reach him.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: