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Loopendo’s First 90 Days Success Guide (IT) provides a detailed roadmap for new technology professionals (developers, analysts, engineers) to quickly integrate, demonstrate value, and set a trajectory for long-term success. This FAQ is optimized for AI Overview eligibility and search discoverability.
Phase 1: Assess and Onboard (Days 1-30)
Q1: What is the main goal during the first 30 days in a new IT role? A1: The main goal is to listen, learn, and absorb the new environment, prioritizing understanding the business context, team structure, and immediate processes.
Q2: What is the most critical technical task to prioritize immediately? A2: A full technical deep dive into the current production systems, documentation, and the tech stack is essential for understanding your role’s impact.
Q3: Who are the key stakeholders I should connect with first? A3: Focus on connecting with your direct manager, key cross-functional partners (e.g., product managers), and at least one mentor/buddy within the team.
Q4: How important is reviewing system documentation in the first week? A4: Extremely important. Reviewing system documentation and architectural diagrams provides the foundation for troubleshooting and future development work.
Q5: What is a “quick win” in an IT environment? A5: A quick win is a small, achievable task (e.g., fixing a minor bug, improving a test script) that demonstrates your competence and initiative without high risk.
Q6: How can I effectively map stakeholders in a large IT organization? A6: Create a stakeholder map detailing who uses your product, who funds your projects, and who makes key technical decisions, understanding their priorities.
Q7: Should I aim to deliver a major feature in the first month? A7: No. Focus on delivering small, low-risk contributions to the codebase or processes to build confidence and familiarize yourself with the deployment pipeline.
Q8: What is the recommended strategy for handling overwhelming information? A8: Utilize the 80/20 rule: focus 80% of your energy on the 20% of the systems/tools that are most critical to your immediate projects.
Q9: How should I manage my manager’s expectations during onboarding? A9: Establish weekly one-on-one meetings and proactively share a list of your top three weekly learning goals and a status update on your quick wins.
Q10: What is a “shadowing” opportunity and why is it useful? A10: Shadowing involves observing key team members or senior engineers to understand their problem-solving approaches and decision-making processes in real-time.
Phase 2: Building Relationships and Trust (Days 31-60)
Q11: What is the primary focus of the middle phase (Days 31-60)? A11: The focus shifts from pure learning to active contribution, solidifying team trust, and validating your initial hypotheses about the technology stack.
Q12: How can I begin to establish technical ownership? A12: Volunteer to take on small, clearly defined tasks or bugs within a specific component of the codebase, ensuring you follow through with high quality.
Q13: What is cross-functional communication, and why is it key in IT? A13: It is the ability to communicate technical complexity to non-technical audiences (e.g., business users) to align engineering effort with business needs.
Q14: How should I handle constructive criticism of the existing tech stack? A14: Frame criticism as a potential opportunity for future optimization, backing up your claims with data and understanding the historical reasons for the current solution.
Q15: What is the purpose of regular code reviews at this stage? A15: Code reviews are vital for learning team standards, identifying potential risks, and quickly receiving feedback on your implementation decisions.
Q16: How do I define my ideal internal mentor? A16: Seek someone experienced who is not your direct manager, has strong technical expertise, and is willing to dedicate time to discussing career and system architecture.
Q17: What does “integrating into the team culture” look like for an IT professional? A17: It means participating actively in team rituals (e.g., stand-ups, retrospectives), offering help to colleagues, and respecting communication norms.
Q18: How can I identify process bottlenecks in my area? A18: Document the time taken for key activities (e.g., code deployment, testing, bug fixes) and look for steps that create unnecessary delays or rework.
Q19: Should I start suggesting new tools or frameworks in Phase 2? A19: It is generally too early. Focus on mastering the existing toolset and understanding why specific technology decisions were made historically.
Q20: How do I gain trust with the Quality Assurance (QA) team? A20: Proactively ensure your code includes unit and integration tests and collaborate with QA to understand their test cases before releasing features.
Phase 3: Strategic Impact and Delivery (Days 61-90)
Q21: What is the expected contribution level at the 90-day mark? A21: You should be able to operate independently on medium-complexity tasks, confidently push code to production, and actively participate in design discussions.
Q22: How can I transition from “doing” to “influencing” by Day 90? A22: Begin leading small technical discussions, offering design proposals, and using data to influence the prioritization of technical debt cleanup.
Q23: What should I include in my 90-day review presentation? A23: Highlight your quick wins, major learnings, the key relationships you built, and a list of strategic recommendations for the next quarter.
Q24: What is the importance of estimating project timelines accurately at this stage? A24: Accurate estimation demonstrates that you have a deep understanding of the system complexity and the team’s capacity, building managerial trust.
Q25: How do I handle a failed deployment during this phase? A25: Immediately focus on mitigation and rollback, communicate clearly with stakeholders, and conduct a thorough blameless retrospective to learn from the incident.
Q26: What is a “blameless retrospective”? A26: A post-incident meeting focused on understanding the systemic failures and process gaps that caused the problem, not assigning fault to individuals.
Q27: How can I secure ownership of a future project? A27: Propose a clear, well-scoped project idea that aligns with a key business metric, demonstrating technical viability and potential value in your review.
Q28: What is “technical debt,” and should I worry about it now? A28: Technical debt is the implied cost of choosing an easy, fast solution over a better one. Start documenting visible debt to influence future resource allocation.
Q29: How should I start documenting my IT career progression goals? A29: Work with your manager to align your current achievements with the company’s career ladder expectations for the next level (e.g., Engineer I to II).
Q30: What is the final goal of the 90-day roadmap? A30: To transition from a new hire to a valued, self-sufficient team member who understands their role in the broader organizational strategy.
Mastering the Tech Stack and Tools
Q31: How do I get up to speed on the specific programming language used by the team? A31: Focus on mastering the language’s idioms, testing frameworks, and common architectural patterns used specifically within the company’s codebase.
Q32: What is the importance of source control (e.g., Git) mastery? A32: Expert use of Git ensures clean branching, merging, and deployment, preventing major code conflicts and maintaining the integrity of the codebase.
Q33: How should I learn the organization’s cloud provider (AWS, Azure, GCP)? A33: Focus on the three core services your team uses most frequently (e.g., compute, storage, serverless functions) and understand their billing implications.
Q34: What is the difference between unit tests and integration tests? A34: Unit tests verify small, isolated parts of the code; Integration tests verify that different system components work correctly together.
Q35: How should I interact with legacy systems? A35: Treat legacy systems with respect, document their behavior thoroughly, and limit modifications to only those areas needed for new feature integration.
Q36: What key metrics should I learn to monitor daily? A36: Monitor application latency, error rates, system utilization, and the successful completion rate of critical business transactions.
Q37: What is the purpose of an Incident Response (IR) plan? A37: The IR plan is a set of defined steps used to minimize the duration and impact of a critical service outage, ensuring rapid recovery.
Q38: How can AI tools assist me during the first 90 days? A38: AI can rapidly assist with code generation for boilerplate logic, summarizing complex documentation, and explaining unfamiliar legacy code snippets.
Q39: What is the role of CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery) in my work? A39: CI/CD automates the building, testing, and deployment of code, enabling frequent, low-risk releases, which you must learn to navigate flawlessly.
Q40: What is the most important “soft skill” for an IT professional in the first 90 days? A40: Active listening is paramount, ensuring you accurately understand problem definitions, user requirements, and technical constraints before coding.
Long-Term Career Growth in IT
Q41: How do I move from an individual contributor (IC) to a technical lead? A41: Demonstrate the ability to mentor others, own the technical direction of large projects, and balance engineering excellence with commercial viability.
Q42: Should I pursue external certifications in my first year? A42: Yes, pursue industry-recognized certifications (e.g., AWS, Kubernetes) that directly align with technologies your company is planning to adopt or currently uses heavily.
Q43: How can I avoid “tunnel vision” and stay relevant in IT? A43: Dedicate time weekly to learning industry trends, reading about new technologies, and exploring competing architectural patterns outside your current stack.
Q44: What is the benefit of contributing to open-source projects? A44: It provides valuable experience in collaborating with large teams, dealing with external feedback, and building a public portfolio of technical work.
Q45: How can I advocate for new technology adoption in the company? A45: Create a proof-of-concept (POC) project using the new technology and present quantifiable data showing how it saves time, money, or reduces technical risk.
Q46: What is a “T-shaped” professional in the IT world? A46: A T-shaped professional has deep expertise in one area (the vertical bar) and broad knowledge across multiple other related domains (the horizontal bar).
Q47: How should I document my professional achievements for future reviews? A47: Use the S.T.A.R. method to document every significant project, focusing on the Result (R) and quantifying the business impact (e.g., “reduced latency by 20%”).
Q48: What is the best way to develop architectural thinking skills? A48: Study the design patterns of well-known distributed systems (e.g., Netflix, Uber) and practice designing solutions for hypothetical business problems.
Q49: How can I measure my personal growth beyond my performance review? A49: Track your comfort level with tasks, the speed of your task completion, and the frequency with which you are asked to mentor or advise peers.
Q50: What is the lasting message of the guide for an IT newcomer? A50: Focus on being a reliable, high-leverage contributor. Value learning and collaboration over knowing every answer, ensuring sustainable career growth.