Your First 90 Days at a Software Job

How new engineers earn trust quickly: learn the codebase, ask good questions and deliver small wins.

6 milestones · ~172 hours total

1. 1

   Before day one

   ~6h

   Set up your tools, revise the stack's basics and prepare three questions about the team and product.

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2. 2

   Weeks 1–2: learn the system

   ~30h

   Run the app locally, read the architecture notes, trace one request end to end and write your own notes.

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3. 3

   Weeks 3–4: first contribution

   ~30h

   Fix a small bug or improve docs, follow the team's pull-request and testing conventions.

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4. 4

   Month 2: own a task

   ~60h

   Take a well-scoped ticket, give an estimate, give status updates early and ask for review before it is perfect.

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5. 5

   Month 3: reliability

   ~40h

   Add tests, learn how to debug in production with logs and metrics, and take part in an on-call or support rotation if offered.

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6. 6

   Feedback and growth

   ~6h

   Ask your manager for specific feedback every two weeks and write a short growth plan for the next six months.

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