I showed this Fedex commercial to my team as an example of what not to do: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNCrMEOqHpc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNCrMEOqHpc

I showed this Fedex commercial to my team as an example of what not to do: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNCrMEOqHpc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNCrMEOqHpc I think the most important thing (just as important as hiring) as a manager is creating a culture of giving credit to others and deflecting credit from oneself. Let others speak for your work because if it's good, someone will say something (and if they don't you should bring it up in a 1:1), because that's the expectation and the culture. Once you do that, everything else takes care of itself in terms of department drama. People who are naturally well mannered will fit in perfectly and people who would have been problems in other environments understand that this is the type of behavior that's expected if they hope to progress, so they will follow suit. Besides that, correctly evaluating performance is important. For engineering managers, one thing I noticed is that code doesn't lie. It's the most objective metric you can use. All other metrics are subjective, and should be weighed less in comparison. If you have no way to easily look up someone's code contributions, it is nearly impossible to evaluate talent correctly. Still trying to figure things out but those are just some of the things I noticed.