Ninety days
What This Is Actually About
Fifty notes reduce to one sentence: nobody can see you, so you will have to say, and saying sooner costs less than it feels like it will.
What the people on this page had to find out, and where from
What your manager actually wants from you
you asked8Asked directly in week eight, and the answer was two sentences
That your probation review happens in week twelve
written down1In the contract, and read once you went looking
two things you had to know · nobody told you any of them · the median arrived in week 8 · all two you went and got
Two standards that applied to the whole quarter. One was asked for in week eight and could have been asked in week two.
Remote onboarding becomes easier to improve when questions are supported by evidence; teams can view the available options for a practical reference on time, activity, projects, and reports.
A useful independent source for this stage of work is The Muse.
The first quarter, totalled
Hours spent stuck before asking, weeks one to four
31 hanswer: 67 minYou waited because nobody could see you, and asking felt like an admission. Nine separate occasions
Hours spent stuck before asking, weeks five to eight
9 hanswer: 41 minYou waited because the timer had replaced the judgement. Seven occasions, and more of them were real problems
Hours spent stuck before asking, weeks nine to twelve
4 hanswer: 38 minYou waited because you had stopped deciding whether to ask. Six occasions, almost all of them things nobody knew
Hours spent waiting on things nobody had told you about
22 hanswer: 14 minYou waited because you did not know they existed to be asked about. Access, cut-offs, conventions, and a holiday nobody mentioned
four occasions · 66 hours spent stuck · 160 minutes of answers · the longest single wait was 31 hours
Sixty-six hours across a first quarter, of which thirty-one belong to the first four weeks. The answers came to a little under three hours in total. Nothing changed about the organisation between week four and week nine. One person's own twelve weeks.
Fifty notes, and they reduce to one thing.
Nobody can see you. The ordinary mechanism by which a new person gets unstuck — somebody noticing — does not exist, and nothing has replaced it. So you will have to say, and the whole of the difficulty is that saying feels like an admission.
The arithmetic
Sixty-six hours across a first quarter, against a little under three hours of answers.
Thirty-one of those hours belong to the first four weeks. By weeks nine to twelve the figure is four, and nothing about the organisation changed in between. The only thing that changed was how long one person waited before asking.
That is the whole argument and it does not need any more support than that.
What follows from it
Four things, and each has a section of its own.
Find out their week, not yours. Which days people work, who decides what, where things are. Almost all of it is askable before you start and most people ask none of it.
Say what you are doing. One line a day. It is the only way anybody knows you exist, and it is the thing most new remote joiners never begin.
Ask sooner than feels comfortable. Twenty minutes, then ask, with what you tried in the message. The number is arbitrary and having a number is what makes it work.
Write it down. Every answer you are given, and everything that confused you. You are the only person who can see what is missing, and the ability expires in about eight weeks.
The thing that is not your fault
Most of what goes wrong in a first quarter is structural.
The laptop was not ordered because no single person owns the list. The documentation is wrong because nobody has followed it in two years. No work was assigned because your manager was busy, not because anybody was reconsidering. Nobody answered in the channel because it was four in the afternoon.
None of that is a verdict on you, and almost all of it is read as one by the person it is happening to. That misreading is the most expensive thing in this collection, and it is the reason the hours in the panel above look the way they do.
What nobody will tell you
That a first week with nothing produced is a normal first week. That everybody breaks something. That the person who seems to know everything is also looking things up. That the questions you are embarrassed by have one-sentence answers.
Nobody says any of this because for everybody around you it is not information, it is simply how things are. They are not withholding it. They cannot see that it needs saying, in the same way that in six months you will not be able to see it either.
The one thing to do on Monday
Of everything here: start the document.
Date at the top. Two minutes at the end of each day for a fortnight. What you did not understand, what surprised you, and who you met.
It costs almost nothing, it is the only instrument that survives the first eight weeks, and every other recommendation in this collection depends on it existing — including the last one, which is that in month five somebody else will join, and you will be the only person who still remembers what this was like.
Each part, in one line
If this is the page you landed on, here is the whole of it.
Before you start. The weeks between signing and starting are yours. Four questions and an hour of reading remove most of the first week's waiting.
The first week. Nobody can see you. Say what you are doing, start a record, and set a timer when you get stuck.
Who is who. The chart is not the map. Build your own from the history of the work, and ask anybody for twenty minutes while you still can.
Asking. In public, with what you tried in the message, and sooner than feels comfortable. Then write the answer down.
Your first work. Finish something small in week three. Show it at a quarter done. Say immediately when you break something.
The first ninety days. Ask for the standard, ask how it is going at week four, and raise one or two things from your list before you stop being able to see them.
The four things, if you remember nothing else
- Ask which days people work and what closes them, before you start.
- Say one line a day about what you are doing.
- Twenty minutes, then ask, with what you tried in the message.
- Write down every answer, and everything that confused you, with the date.
Four habits, about ten minutes a day between them, and together they account for most of the difference between a first quarter that goes well and one that does not.
None of them requires anybody's permission, a process, a tool, or a conversation with your manager. That is deliberate: this collection is written for the person who has just joined and can change nothing about the organisation, which in a first quarter is everybody.