How to win your first 90 days

You got the offer.

Great comp, exciting product, strong team. You celebrated, gave notice, wrapped up your old role.

Now you're sitting in day-one orientation wondering why you already feel behind.

Here's what nobody told you: The first 90 days aren't about learning the business. They're about positioning yourself within it.

Most people treat onboarding like a passive process. They wait for information to come to them. They assume someone will tell them what matters. They focus on understanding everything before doing anything.

That approach costs you three months of impact. In a market where every quarter counts, three months of invisibility is a hole you'll spend the next year climbing out of.

Here's what the ones who accelerate figured out: Your first 90 days come with maximum permission to ask questions and minimum expectations for delivery. Everyone else uses this window to gather information. The high performers use it to gather influence.

The Main Game

Most onboarding advice tells you to build relationships and find quick wins. That's fine. But it misses the main game.

The main game is figuring out what actually matters.

Every organization has one or two goals that have executive attention right now. Projects where progress gets reported to senior leadership. Metrics that your skip-level checks every Monday. Initiatives where being associated with success will accelerate your career faster than two years of solid work on anything else.

Too many people fall into the "I'm so busy, I must be successful" trap. They work hard on things that don't matter to the people who can accelerate their career. They optimize for activity instead of impact. They wonder why they're not getting promoted while someone who seems to do less keeps getting tapped for high-visibility opportunities.

The difference is that person figured out what game was being played. You need to figure it out in your first three weeks.

Before Day One

The highest-leverage onboarding work happens before your first day. Spend two hours on strategic prep:

1. Research the company's recent earnings calls, press coverage, and strategic pivots.

2. Look up your manager, their peers, and leadership on LinkedIn. Note what they care about.

3. Draft your coffee chat list so you can start scheduling the moment your calendar works.

4. Create a personal strategy doc with three outcomes you'd consider a successful first 90 days.

This pre-work puts you weeks ahead of someone who shows up with no plan.

Week One: Strategic Observation

Let's be honest. You're going to spend half of week one waiting for your laptop, filling out paperwork, and sitting in orientation sessions. Use this time strategically.

Treat orientation as intelligence gathering.

• Pay attention to what gets emphasized and what gets glossed over.

• Observe Slack before participating. Notice who speaks up, which channels are active, how decisions get discussed.

• Start a confusion log of everything that doesn't make sense. In three weeks, this becomes the documentation you wish existed.

• Schedule coffee chats for weeks 2-3.

• Have a real conversation with your manager beyond the welcome 1:1. Ask: What does success look like for this role in six months? What's the biggest problem you're hoping I can help solve?

Weeks 2-3: Intelligence Gathering

Now execute those strategic conversations. In every one, you're trying to answer:

1. What are the 1-2 priorities that have the org's attention right now? Not the twelve things on the roadmap. The one or two that leadership actually talks about.

2. What does your manager get measured on? Your success is tied to their success. Figure out what their success looks like.

3. What does your skip-level care about? What would make them notice you?

4. Which projects have executive visibility? Who's on them? How did they get there?

Ask everyone: "What's the one thing our team could accomplish this quarter that would make the biggest difference?" This question reveals what matters.

While you're gathering intelligence, pay attention to how the company uses AI. Most teams know they should be using it more effectively but nobody has time to figure it out. If you come in with even moderate AI fluency, you can become invaluable without being obnoxious. When you're working alongside someone doing something manually, offer to help. When they ask "how did you do that?" walk them through it. Be generous. Help people look good. Over time, you become the person others come to when they want to work smarter.

Weeks 3-4: Strategic Quick Wins

After your conversations, you should have two lists. What matters to leadership, and what's stuck on the back burner.

The ideal quick win sits at the intersection: something small enough to ship in your first month, but connected to something that actually matters.

Fixing a flaky test is fine. Fixing a flaky test that's blocking releases on the highest-priority project is career-accelerating. Updating documentation is useful. Creating documentation that helps close deals on the product launch your skip cares about is strategic.

Don't just find things nobody has time for. Find the things nobody has time for that would move the needle on what matters.

Make It Visible (Without Being That Person)

Ship the quick wins, but make sure people know about them in a way that doesn't make everyone roll their eyes.

Start by validating the problem. Post in Slack:

This does a few things. It makes the problem communal, not just yours. It positions your solution as something you stumbled into, not something you built to show off. And it invites others into the conversation rather than announcing your accomplishment.

Or tell one person directly. Mention it casually to someone affected. They'll often spread the word for you, which is far more credible than spreading it yourself.

The goal is to build a reputation as someone who quietly makes things better. That reputation compounds faster than any self-promotion ever could.

Week 5: The Alignment Lock

Around the end of your first month, force the success conversation. Don't wait for your manager to tell you what good looks like.

Send this email:

"I'd like to schedule 45 minutes to align on priorities. I'll come prepared with what I think our top 3 priorities should be for my first 6 months, proposed success metrics, and what I need from you to be successful. I'd love your input on whether I'm focused on the right areas."

Notice what you're not doing: you're not asking "what should I work on?" You're proposing specific outcomes and asking for feedback. You're showing up as someone with opinions who wants alignment, not someone waiting to be told.

This is where your intelligence work pays off. You know what matters. Now propose goals that align your success with theirs.

Weeks 6-12: Ruthless Prioritization

The reality is you'll be pulled into work that doesn't matter. Low-impact projects, busywork, things that exist because of politics. You can't always say no. But you can manage them strategically.

Use your alignment meeting as a filter. Does this connect to the priorities I aligned on? If yes, prioritize it. If no, do the minimum viable version and protect your time for what actually matters. Don't let the urgent crowd out the important.

When you deliver results, let your work speak through natural channels. Send your manager a brief summary they can forward to leadership. Share learnings in team retros. Offer tools you built to others who might benefit. Generosity is the most credible form of visibility.

The Bottom Line

The first 90 days set trajectory for years.

Most people give away their agency in this window. They wait. They defer. They work hard on things that don't matter to the people who can accelerate their career.

High performers claim agency immediately. They figure out how the game is played before they start playing. They learn what matters to their manager, their skip, and the org. They ship quick wins that connect to what leadership cares about. They become the person who helps others work smarter. They create visibility without becoming insufferable about it.

Your first 90 days are the highest-leverage window you'll ever have in a role. The permission to ask naive questions expires. The low expectations disappear. The fresh-eyes advantage fades.

Don't wait to be told what success looks like. Define it, claim it, deliver it.

~ Warbler