Your First 90 Days in a New Engineering Role

We stay in touch with the people we place, and the pattern in who settles well is consistent enough to be worth writing down. It is rarely about technical capability, which was assessed before the offer. It is about how the first three months are used.

Weeks one to four: learn the process before improving it

The fastest way to lose credibility on a new site is to explain in week two how the last place did it better. Spend the first month understanding why things are the way they are. There is usually a reason, and sometimes it is a good one.

Walk the line. Talk to setters, operators and maintenance before you talk to management about what needs changing. They know where the problems are and they will tell you if you ask properly.

Weeks five to eight: find one thing and fix it properly

Pick something small, visible and genuinely irritating to the people around you. Fix it completely rather than partially. The specific improvement matters far less than establishing that when you say you will sort something out, it gets sorted out.

Weeks nine to twelve: make your work legible

Technical people consistently undersell what they have done, then feel overlooked. Keep a plain record of what you have delivered and what it was worth. You will need it at your first review, and you will not remember it otherwise.

Throughout: ask the awkward question early

If something about the role is not what you understood it to be, raise it in month one when it reads as clarification. Raise it in month six and it reads as a complaint. We would much rather hear from you at week three than at month five, and so would your employer.