What the first 90 days should look like for a senior tech hire

The strongest predictor of whether a senior hire will still be at the company at eighteen months is not the interview process, the offer, or even the manager relationship. It is the shape of the first ninety days. Companies that design this deliberately retain senior hires at nearly twice the rate of companies that do not.

The three phases that actually matter

• Days 1–30 — listening tour. The hire's only deliverable is a written read of the team, the codebase, and the top three problems as they see them. No launches, no reorganisations, no hires.
• Days 31–60 — one visible win. A single scoped problem the hire owns end-to-end, chosen with the manager. It signals to the team that the hire ships, and to the hire that the company trusts their judgment.
• Days 61–90 — the plan. A written six-month plan the hire presents to their manager and one skip level. Not aspirational; specific commitments with named risks.

The check-ins that actually work

Weekly one-on-ones with the manager are table stakes. What separates the companies with strong retention is a structured check-in with a peer at day 30, a skip-level at day 60, and an external coach or mentor at day 90. Each of these surfaces different signal, and none of them replace the others.

What to watch for

The single strongest early-warning sign of a senior hire in trouble is not what they say — it is what they stop saying. When the questions in the one-on-one go from specific and probing to general and polite, the hire has decided the environment does not reward candour. That decision is almost impossible to reverse without an intervention from the manager's manager.

"Onboarding is the second interview. The candidate is deciding whether to stay, and they are deciding with the same rigour they used to decide whether to join."