Your First 90 Days in a New Job

Days 1–30: Learn, Don't Fix

The instinct to prove value immediately is the most common and most expensive mistake new joiners make. Every process you find stupid exists for a reason you have not learned yet.

• Meet everyone your role touches — one 30-minute conversation each, no agenda beyond understanding their work
• Ask each person: what does a good week look like for you, and what gets in the way?
• Learn the systems, the tools, the vocabulary and the acronyms. Write them down.
• Understand how your team's success is actually measured, not how you assumed it was
• Find out who the real decision makers are — they are not always the ones on the org chart
• Keep a list of things that look broken. Do not act on it yet. You will revise most of it by day 60.

The Questions to Ask Your Manager in Week One

Most new joiners wait to be told. Asking these explicitly in your first week prevents a whole class of later problems.

• What does success look like for me at 30, 60 and 90 days?
• What are your expectations that you would consider obvious and might not state?
• How do you prefer to be updated — and how often?
• What is the biggest problem in the team right now that I could eventually help with?
• Is there anything about how the previous person in this role worked that you'd want done differently?
• Then write down the answers and check yourself against them at each milestone

Days 31–60: Contribute Visibly

By month two you have enough context to add value. The goal now is a small number of visible, completed wins rather than one ambitious project.

• Pick one or two small, genuinely useful problems and finish them completely
• Prefer wins that help someone else's work, not just your own metrics
• Start forming opinions and voicing them in meetings — silence past month two reads as disengagement
• Revisit your day-30 list of broken things. Ask why each is that way before proposing change.
• Document something that was tribal knowledge — it is high value and low risk
• Ask for feedback explicitly rather than waiting for your review

Days 61–90: Own Something

By the end of month three you should have a defined area where you are the person people go to.

• Take clear ownership of at least one recurring responsibility
• Propose one improvement with the reasoning and the trade-off, not just the complaint
• Build relationships outside your immediate team — cross-functional context compounds later
• Have a deliberate conversation with your manager about the next six months
• If something is not working, raise it now. Month three is early enough to be constructive.

Reading the Culture

Most early missteps are cultural, not technical. Every organisation has unwritten rules, and nobody will tell you what they are.

• How are disagreements handled — openly in meetings, or privately beforehand?
• What is the real response-time expectation on messages, versus the stated one?
• Are meetings for deciding, or for announcing decisions already made elsewhere?
• How much detail does your manager want — and is that different from what their manager wants?
• Watch who gets credited and how. It tells you what the organisation values.
• Match the culture first; change it later, once you have standing to.

Communication Is the Multiplier

Early on, people cannot yet see your work quality, so they judge from how clearly you communicate about it.

• Over-communicate progress in month one — a short weekly update is enough
• Flag blockers early rather than absorbing them silently. Silence is read as everything being fine.
• When you don't understand something, ask in the moment. It is expected now and awkward in month six.
• Speak up in at least one meeting a week, even briefly
• Say 'I don't know yet, I'll find out and come back to you' rather than guessing

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