Advice for New Faculty

Here are important lessons that I have never read anywhere else:

• As a new faculty introduce yourself to all secretaries, all administrative and technical staff ASAP when you start. They really appreciate it and will be thankful that the bigshot prof did not forget them. In future, they will go out of their way to help you.
• As a new colleague: make a list of all faculty members in your dept (and the interesting ones in other depts) and make sure to go to lunch with every single one of them at least once in your first 9 months at your new dept. Ask them the same questions and see how their answers differ. You will learn so much from that! Also, use everyone of them for follow-up questions to the next persons. The more you know about your university, the more effective you are. There is nothing worse than an isolated faculty member ... and everybody like to get asked for going to lunch together.
• When you hire students or postdocs, *always* include all your students or postdocs in that decision. That glues your team together!
• Don’t get too much hardware or too many robots. It is much smarter to buy one (more realiable and more expensive) piece of equipment, configure it really well, figure out how to get the maximum out of that piece of hardware and the software. If every student has their own simulator/hardware interface/robot/etc, most will never become really good at something.
• Also, there is a fun book to read: What they didnt teach you in grad school?

(to be continued whenever I remember further points)