Your first 90 days in a new technical job

The first three months in a new technical job determine your reputation for years. Not because anyone punishes you for a beginner's mistake, but because colleagues and managers form their image of you in that period: do they learn fast, can you build on them, do they fit with us. The good news: you largely steer that image yourself, with an approach that has little to do with technology.

Month one: learn the installation and the people

Your first reflex is to prove yourself technically. Yet listening is more valuable now. Every plant has its own logic: why that one machine is never stopped on a Friday, why that alarm may be ignored and that other one never. That knowledge is documented nowhere; it lives in the heads of your colleagues. Ask many questions, write down what you hear, and walk along with the people who have been there longest. Whoever mainly asks instead of proclaims in month one builds the credit they will need later.

Month two: make yourself visibly reliable

Now delivering starts to count, but choose deliberately. First take the work that is visible and finishable: the small breakdown that has dragged on for weeks, the documentation nobody updated, the stock that does not add up. Fast, finished results weigh more for your reputation than half a big project. And equally important: keep your commitments. Say what you will do, do it, and report when something fails before anyone has to ask. Reliability in small things is the real currency in technical teams.

Month three: come with your first improvement

After two months you know the environment well enough to propose something without missing the mark. Pick one concrete improvement you can drive yourself, substantiate it with what you saw, and present it as a question instead of criticism: 'I noticed this, would it help if we approached it like that'. That positions you as someone who thinks along, without antagonising the people who always did it that way.

What can wait

Not everything has to happen in three months. Big change proposals, discussions about how things were better at your previous job, and negotiations about your package: park them until you have built credit. Do ask from day one for a fixed evaluation moment after your trial period, so you know where you stand. And if you notice the job is fundamentally different from what was promised, name it early; that conversation only gets harder the longer you wait.