# The first 90 days as a CTO

Leadership · Published 2026-01-12 · 2 min read · By Dave Brown

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Taking on a CTO role, whether for the first time or the fifth, tends to
compress a lot of judgment into a very short window. The organization is
watching for signal. The board wants confidence without overreach. And the
engineering team is quietly deciding whether this is someone worth trusting
with hard problems.

## Resist the urge to decide everything early

The instinct in the first weeks is to have an opinion on everything —
architecture, process, tooling, org structure. Most of that instinct should
be suppressed. Early opinions formed without context are expensive to walk
back, and walking them back costs more credibility than waiting would have.

A more durable approach: spend the first month building an accurate model of
how the organization actually works, not how the org chart says it works.
Where do decisions really get made? Where does work quietly stall? Who do
people go to when something is genuinely broken?

## Find the two or three decisions that can't wait

Not everything can wait, though. Some decisions — a failing vendor
relationship, a critical hire, a system on the edge of falling over — are
already on the clock before the CTO walks in the door. Part of the job in
the first 90 days is separating those from the much longer list of things
that merely feel urgent.

### A rough filter

- Will the cost of waiting compound weekly, or is it flat?
- Does only the CTO have the authority to unblock it?
- Would a reasonable outside observer consider it obviously overdue?

If a decision doesn't clear that bar, it can usually wait until there's
enough context to make it well.

## Build trust with engineering before asking anything of them

Credibility with an engineering organization is earned specifically, not
generally. Being technically strong in the abstract doesn't transfer trust
automatically — showing up to the right conversations, asking sharp
questions, and being visibly fair when things go wrong does.

The first 90 days are less about proving technical range and more about
demonstrating judgment under incomplete information — because that is,
in fact, most of the job afterward too.

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Dave Brown · CTO & Executive Advisor · New York, NY · [hi@davecto.com](mailto:hi@davecto.com)

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