An Individual Contributor's advice for your first 90 days

Joining a new technology team can be overwhelming.

As a new joiner, you are expected to integrate with your new team and start to make impact within a short period of time. Some people tend to focus volume of work while some choose to build relationship across teams. Whichever you choose, it's important to know and keep in mind how your performance would be assessed.

While it's important to focus on your output and grow your influence, it's often easier and better to build trust on quality. From my little experience, when it comes to earning trust at work, quality trumps velocity.

Focus on doing quality work and then improve on your velocity.

Don't feel pressured to deliver much at first, you stand a better chance to build trust when you deliver quality work. Less is more - in other words, lesser quality work is better than more shoddy work.

My final advice for an individual contributor who is joining a new team is this: study and observe the culture of the company and have a good understanding of your expectation from your manager. Ask questions if you don't understand what is expected of you especially in the first 90 days. Get feedback from your manager and your colleagues as often as you can.

All the best.

Babajide Owosakin

Babajide Owosakin