The First 90 Days as CTO

Alexander Polomodov opens with the central reversal: a CTO's first 90 days do not begin on day one. By the time the person joins, the company, people, and type of transition have already been selected, negotiations have happened, and the space for action has been set. The journey therefore has four parts: market research, mutual interviews, a commitment point, and the probation period itself. The title guarantees nothing; it may describe a chief architect, product partner, scaler of an established business, or crisis leader.

Before signing, the candidate builds a context map covering industry and regulation, company stage, ownership model, geography, economics, technology maturity, and the real centers of influence. Public reports, job listings, conference talks, customer reviews, release cadence, and status pages produce hypotheses that can be tested in interviews. The flow of money deserves special attention: a CTO owns a capital-intensive part of the company and must connect technology choices to revenue, margins, and business constraints.

At the commitment point, both sides make the mutual contract explicit: why the role exists now, what outcomes are expected after 30 and 90 days, what the mandate includes, which decisions can be made independently, which resources are available, who sponsors the change, and how success will be judged. After joining, the first month is for diagnosis rather than importing practices from a previous employer. The CTO listens to different groups, observes rituals and artifacts, separates facts from interpretations, and traces the system from customer need and money through delivery to reliability, security, and people.

By day 30 there should be an organizational map and testable hypotheses; days 30–90 should focus on one or two bets with a clear pain, owner, and observable result. A grand strategy imported before diagnosis is treated as dysfunction, while a CTO who centralizes every decision becomes the bottleneck. The closing section covers red flags: a changing company story, a shrinking mandate, or missing sponsorship and resources. These gaps must be recorded early, discussed against a deadline, and resolved by aligning accountability with actual authority. The company is on probation too.