Anthropic Eng Leader And Ex-Senior Director at Meta On Microsoft vs Facebook, Career Learnings

Fiona Fung currently supports the Claude Code team at Anthropic and was previously a Senior Director at Meta. She grew quickly through the ranks at Microsoft and Meta before joining Anthropic. I interviewed her about what she learned along the way. 𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀: • Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/anthropic-eng-leader-and-ex-senior • YouTube: https://youtu.be/b5-d8u-c99s • Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835 𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀: 00:00 - Intro 00:38 - Impact vs team health 03:04 - Managing managers for the first time 05:31 - Advice on mentoring others 06:55 - What you should use 1 on 1s for 07:56 - Leaving Microsoft for Facebook 10:59 - Microsoft vs Facebook culture 12:01 - Why dogfooding is important 21:25 - Joining Anthropic 27:23 - Feedback that changed her career 28:43 - Advice for younger self 29:14 - Outro 𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗙𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮: • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fionafung/ 𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻: • Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/ • X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/ • Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman • TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  In a world where you can be anything, be kind.

• 0:02Ryan Peterman?

  This is Fiona Fung. She grew to a senior director by rising through the ranks of Microsoft and Meta. And today she supports the Claude Code team at Anthropic. And I asked her for everything she learned along the way. What are the things that stood out to you? That's different between Microsoft and Facebook?

• 0:19Speaker 00

  Definitely speed came to mind. Oh, my gosh, a sprint lasts a week? Like, usually a sprint for me was like four weeks.

• 0:25Ryan Peterman?

  Was there ever a time where you received feedback and it really changed your career?

• 0:30Speaker 00

  Looking back, that's probably one thing I wish I'd done better at.

• 0:34Ryan Peterman?

  Here's the full episode.

• 0:39Ryan Peterman?

  Let's say there's some project, it's going to be really impactful, but team health is going to take a hit or vice versa. How do you make those calls?

• 0:49Speaker 00

  Oh, that's a really good one. We had quite a few of these in the Facebook Marketplace days. I would say recognizing when a moment is really such that it's almost existential. So Facebook Marketplace, I would definitely remember we had a couple of lockdowns or war rooms where it really became, wow, we really needed to focus. Like, make sure, and actually, that's one thing I like about lockdowns or war rooms. It allows teams to focus. Focus on what it is that we were really saying how to do and making sure we're focused on doing that really well. But it does come at a cost to team morale. So I, my advice is really have those deliberate trade off discussions with, with, with the team and leadership.

• 1:32Speaker 00

  Like, I think, looking back, that's probably one thing I wish I'd done better at. But in the early Marketplace days, in some of those war rooms, I wish we were also, yeah, just even more up. Like, we took a very aggressive goal for, for, I forgot if we called it lockdown or war room, because we changed the team names after a while. But we took a very aggressive growth goal. So we weren't going to exit until we hit a certain growth number. And looking back, I think that, like, then that could have been like, and that war room actually went on for like a really long time. If I had the time machine to do it all over, I probably would have. Like take a look at that and be much more realistic of how long that was gonna take.

• 2:12Speaker 00

  Discuss like, you know, the, the, you know, like morale and team health of the team and then just be very upfront with the team of, hey, we're gonna go on this, you know, journey together. But this is how long we, you know, we, we think it's gonna take.

• 2:25Ryan Peterman?

  I mean, when I think of War Room, I think of everyone's in a big room and it's for maybe a week for a launch or something like that.

• 2:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:32Ryan Peterman?

  How long was that?

• 2:34Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh, it felt like at least two months. And that was what I mean, we took a growth goal. But I think at the time we were like, well, maybe it's a couple of, you know, fixes that we had to do. There were so many lessons learned. I still remember in that war and we launched seventy five experiments at one time too, when we were trying to. And so, and we were in a literal, like there was a room in Menlo Park and a room in, in Seattle. Um, but I think that one, no one knew. We going until we didn't realize it was gonna, you know, take us that long. So that was definitely a lesson learned.

• 3:04Ryan Peterman?

  At some point in your, your career at Microsoft, you became a manager of managers. I'm curious, like, what is the, like, the big pitfall that maybe you experienced or maybe like growing pain when you went from a frontline manager to someone who's managing others?

• 3:21Speaker 00

  It kind of like goes back to that partnership. Um, actually, I will share my story. The first time I supported managers or became manager of managers, I guess, was with, with two different managers. One, uh, was manager for TypeScript team. And I, they, you know, they are brilliant, brilliant engineers, still probably one of the best compiler engineers I've ever worked with. And so I remember right in the beginning, I'm like, hey, it's like, like we were always like collaborating as a partnership. What, what are the things you're really strong at? What are the things I'm good at? And how do we divide and conquer? So I would say that's maybe one thing that's unique of when you start supporting managers and managers, like, um, they are also gonna have additional skill sets. That's not just IC skill sets, also manager skill sets.

• 4:03Speaker 00

  So it's even more opportunities to figure out how you both can complement each other and, and, uh, help each other where it's most needed. So that was one really good, you know, like just new approach that was it was it was new compared to supporting all ICs. I would say the other one that becomes even more important is building that trust but verify muscle because there's a lot of trust like, you know, as managers, we have a lot of responsibilities, leading teams and but making sure that, you know, because I think sometimes you want my also hear advice of, oh, delegate so it could scale up. If you delegate too much, but don't do the trust and verify, you you lose touch with with a project a little bit too much. So finding that right balance of of and and

• 4:47Speaker 00

  some of that comes from experience, but also making sure encourage that really transparent conversation with folks you support. Like to to all managers, one thing I ask for is, please, you know, like, let's have fast feedback with each other, but also let's be always super transparent about what's going out well and what's not going well. Like, you know, that meme of the the dog holding the coffee cup in a room of Fargo, this is fine? That's my nightmare of of if something's like really that. I remember once I was supporting someone, I'm like, hey, how are things going? And, you know, they're like, oh, it's fine. I'm like, oh, my gosh, I'm not doing fine. I'm impressed that you're doing fine. So but it starts with just because if we can actually discuss, you know, things that are like, you know, hot or really need help, that's how we can actually solve it for a team versus the this is fine dog meme.

• 5:32Ryan Peterman?

  You mentioned to be a good manager, you should enjoy growing others or mentoring others. And I'm curious, now that you've done it for so long, do you have any tips on how to mentor others?

• 5:42Speaker 00

  I would start it with just a really explicit conversation with your mentee of what they're looking for in the relationship. Like, so, for example, after three months of mentoring, what does success look like to them? Or after six months, what does it look like? Just so that then it's good effective use of time for for you both. I would also say another tip is there's a difference between mentoring and coaching. And sometimes making sure you have that explicit conversation to see what the other person's looking for. So in mentoring, for sure, you're like listening and trying to dispel helpful advice. In coaching, you're actually acting as a mirror for the other person to help them discover the answers within themselves. So thinking about those two different modes as well could help.

• 6:23Ryan Peterman?

  I see. Yeah, that's one thing I was curious is how much of it do you feel like should be driven by the mentee versus the mentor?

• 6:31Speaker 00

  Hmm. I I honestly, the most effective mentoring relationships, it comes from that goal being set by the mentee. And for sure, the mentor can help with like life experiences or even advice of different resources, but for all the folks out there looking for mentoring relationship, I would say set really explicit goals for what it is that you're looking to receive out of the mentoring relationship.

• 6:55Ryan Peterman?

  If you were to give advice to ICs on like, what's the best thing you can do in one on ones, what would that advice be?

• 7:04Speaker 00

  I would say save status reporting and all that for some asynchronous form. If you know, like you know, here in Anthropic, a Slack and so it could be a Slack message or I like to create a one on one doc that is a living doc between both of us so that any async update we can just put in there. I would say save the actual one on one time for any conversations you want to have, whether it's you're curious about learning about something new or you think, hey, it's a good opportunity for me to, you know, like, dig a little bit deeper into the work that I'm doing with my manager because there might be some interesting product conversations. Whatever it is, I would save the one on one time for those live conversations and anything that's status reporting, you know, you can feel free to use the asynchronous forms of communication.

• 7:48Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, I think I hear that a lot, but I still think a lot of people do status reports anyways in one on ones. So going into working at Facebook at the time, what's the story behind you leaving Microsoft and joining Facebook?

• 8:04Speaker 00

  So definitely, I've had a lot of friends that was really, really enjoying Facebook and they're great engineers and but there was always something I really wanted to finish at Microsoft. So, you know, like whether it was Visual Studio Editor or debugger, the last project I was working on was JavaScript and TypeScript. So I really cared about, you know, being there with the team to get TypeScript 1.0 out the door. But then I got a ping from Facebook in late 2014 from actually who ended up, you know, being my first manager at Facebook. We worked together on Visual Studio and he's like, hey, I'm noticing people buying and selling products on Facebook groups and we're thinking of building a product around it. And we're going, get out of here. I'm in one of those groups.

• 8:48Speaker 00

  It was amazing experience. The first time I made meaningful new connections because in those days, Facebook for me was more about reconnecting with high school friends or coworkers. I never created any new connections.

• 9:00Speaker 00

  But I told him, but I really wanted to, you know, be with a team to to help, you know, finish a touch script one dot O. But that was like the like, that was one big draw to Facebook. It was just this dream of enabling something totally different from DevTools, but the just dream of enabling commerce on Facebook. Just because I I really like, there were three things I really believed in. And that kind of starting with C to C commerce. Because I'm all I'm very mission driven. So in those days, I was passionate about, wow, if we can enable the style of commerce. Number one, we're very fortunate in tech. You know, we can afford most things new and probably deliver it in six hours. Like 24 hours isn't even fast enough. Most of the world isn't like that.

• 9:42Speaker 00

  And a difference of $5 or $10 can be a difference of can I afford it or can I not? You know, most folks can't afford things new like or the folks may not be able to afford things new and buying them used would be a way to be able to afford. That was one. The second was environmentalist at heart. I feel like there's all these goods in the world. It'd be great if I can be help help work on a platform that enables those goods to get their second, third or fourth life. And the last one is just supporting small businesses. I really love local small businesses. I feel like they're the lifeblood of any community. So having a platform that enables someone to kickstart a business without then have without, you know, first time to get a brick and mortar store. I was really passionate about. So that was all the mission.

• 10:24Speaker 00

  And so that was one big draw to join, you know, then Facebook in 2015. The other was I was by this point at Microsoft 11 and a half years. And I felt, oh, yeah, I've become, you know, reasonably proficient and and being a Microsoft engineer in the Microsoft stack. But I realized if you take me outside of that bubble, there were so many things I didn't know. And so part of it, too, was also doing wanting to just make sure how I can learn to be an effective engineer when I'm, you know, not within the safe cocoon of the Microsoft ecosystem.

• 10:59Ryan Peterman?

  After you got to Facebook and experienced the culture for a bit, curious, like, what are the things that stood out to you or you saw that's different between Microsoft and Facebook?

• 11:10Speaker 00

  There were things that were definitely similar, like work with really great people. People really pash about what they're doing. Uh, definitely speed came to mind. So, um, Facebook Marketplace just operated. We were doing weekly updates at the time with the first version. It was actually on duh duh duh facebook.com. So I remember there were weekly updates. I remember going, oh, my gosh, a sprint lasts a week? Like usually a sprint for me was like four weeks at, you know, Visual Studio. And back then I thought that was already a short time compared to, you know, where it started. So definitely speed. Facebook also felt much smaller to me back then, especially coming from Microsoft. So there used to be this poster on the wall that says, nothing at Facebook is somebody else's problem. And I really love that culture.

• 11:52Speaker 00

  It was no matter your role, if there was, you know, a problem, everybody leaned in to help. And so that was something I really, really loved and appreciated.

• 12:01Ryan Peterman?

  When you eventually left Meta, I saw that there were, you know, you write this badge post and hundreds of people are, are kind of saying the reason why they enjoyed working with you. And I noticed several patterns of things that you had done where, you know, many, many dozens of people are saying, I really like that particular part of working with you. So I'd love to go on each of these and kind of ask you your thoughts on them. So the first one is on dog fooding. A lot of people are saying they really appreciated you being a great partner and reporting problems in the product and using the products. So I'm curious, why do you do dog fooding as much as you do? And, you know, why is it important?

• 12:41Speaker 00

  Oh, I love, it's one of my favorite topics. So, um, as I mentioned, my first job out of college was using Visual Studio to build Visual Studio. So, and I'm really grateful that I got to experience that. And I think that's where I've learned, oh, wow, yeah, I'm going to use a product every day that I'm building. So that's where that initially came from. And I feel it really gave like, not only empathy for what our users are going through, but it really gives you a good pulse of the product. Plus it was easy on VS because you're using VS to build VS. Um, but then I guess I carried that over, uh, to Facebook Marketplace. I remembered our first test launch was in the Seattle area and also Hawaii. And I remembered I would have a pile of things that usually we would have.

• 13:25Speaker 00

  You know, donated and my husband's getting so annoyed like, why do we sell this pop-up? I'm like, no, I need good inventory for me to sell on Facebook Marketplace. And that was where, actually it was super rewarding too, not only in terms of using the product and gaining insights, also just inspiration from, you know, meeting users of Facebook Marketplace and, and seeing that what you do makes a difference. So I think that just kind of carried throughout. So then, yeah, when I was on RL, it was a lot of dog fooding of our VR Quest devices, or I remember when we were first starting up Ray-Ban Stories, which now became Ray-Ban Meta. It was actually during COVID. So then it was a lot of dog fooding, you know, devices from home.

• 14:04Speaker 00

  But yeah, like I, and I think definitely as a manager, you don't get to code, you know, every day or nearly as often as, as one would like. But dog fooding the product, that's what enables you to experience what it is that your team is working on. And I like to think of it as my maker time. So for example, my last role, working on VR, VR product with Horizon OS. Yeah, like anytime I was able to help us debug some hard to repo issue, I was, that was my maker time. And I felt it was my little way to contribute to the quality of the product. Plus, I don't know why, the way my house is built, I was always able to repro certain floor height bugs. And I was really happy at being able to, you know, get those logs.

• 14:46Ryan Peterman?

  I noticed something different too, when a manager or a leader dog foods, um, kind of adds some, some urgency to the bugs as well. So there might be something that everyone kind of knows about, but kind of gets lost. But then, you know, when you or, or Boz or someone says, hey, this thing's broken, I can't use this. Everyone, it's a sev basically, you know, if you are fixing it. So I, yeah, it feels like engineering leaders can kind of like focus people on, on what matters.

• 15:16Speaker 00

  I, I would say that's also the thing I get the most feedback on when I, anytime I join a new team, even like including Instagram, like I would just get outreach from Eng to go, it's awesome that you're using our product and you, you know, you care about what we do. So I also think as leaders, it's a great way to build, you know, relationship and rapport with your overall team.

• 15:37Ryan Peterman?

  Do you have any tips on how to dog food, given you're so prolific?

• 15:42Speaker 00

  By the way, I love that on Facebook, we still have this X Meta product feedback group. So I'm still posting on that. So thanks in advance Meta for responding to my feedback post. I would say like, find a way to integrate into your life that, you know, brings you joy. Now here, I'm super excited because I'm using Claude Code to build Claude Code. First time I've been able to ship production software in a really long time. And I forget how much fun it is to work on code and ship it and be able to see, you know, customer feedback. So here it's kind of easy again, because, you know, it's just part of my day job. But I would say, for example, when it was working on VR, thinking about what is it that I really enjoy in life?

• 16:23Speaker 00

  And finding a way to incorporate that in VR. So for example, what I love to use of VR headsets was, one was working out, so supernatural. I love, love, love that experience. But the other one was opposite of the spectrum, super couch potato. I love to watch movies and knit while I, you know, so I would like to like, you know, knit and watch movies while I'm wearing the VR headset. And those are just things that I enjoy and bring me joy. So it makes dog food even more enjoyable and less of a chore. Or it shouldn't be a chore. I think when it becomes a chore, that's when you're like, oh, this is, you always want to try to keep it fun and engaging. But I would say to leaders too, another effective way to dog food is do product sessions with your team.

• 17:04Speaker 00

  So on my last team in VR, we would do every Friday, me, my PM partner Carmen and my design partner Andrea, as we would hold these almost like leadership dog feeding sessions of any feature that we think is about ready to ship. We put it on the headset and then give really fast feedback. So incorporating dog feeding that way also allows you to give really quick feedback to your team as well.

• 17:27Ryan Peterman?

  Another thing that I saw, like dozens of people saying is there were a lot of PMs that were saying, I really enjoyed working with you, or directors of PM or various other PMs. And so I'm curious, what's your tip on as an edge leader, you know, how to work well with product management?

• 17:47Speaker 00

  Oh, I would say, oh my gosh, I, I was really fortunate at Meta to work with so many amazing PMs.

• 17:56Speaker 00

  Really starting initially to go, hey, overall as our group, right? Like it's a leadership group. What are we really setting out to do? And where do we each bring the strengths? Cause there's always gonna be more work than people. And so with product, like, you know, with my PM partners being upfront going, okay, I got this and you got that. Like that whole divide and conquer was great. I think all the PMs I've worked with also appreciated that I did use the product a lot. So a lot of our one on ones would also be just riffing on product discussions. And, and so I think that also really resonated with my PM partners.

• 18:29Ryan Peterman?

  I see. So another value of dog food.

• 18:31Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 18:32Ryan Peterman?

  I see. And then I also saw just generally, a lot of people calling out, I, I've, I've seen a lot of badge posts at this point about an unusual amount of people calling out kindness and like in the culture of the orgs that you build. And I also saw that you wrote about kindness as well. I'm curious, like your thoughts on kindness in engineering orgs and the value of it.

• 18:54Speaker 00

  Oh, I love it. Yeah. I think my, my last bullet in my badge post was in a world where you can be anything, be kind.

• 19:01Ryan Peterman?

  Right.

• 19:01Speaker 00

  It, it probably comes from, I remember during COVID, I mean, during that time I was working on AR and VR operating systems. We were trying to ship Quest two during COVID. We were getting incubating like Rayban stories and getting ready to ship that too. It was just everybody, especially when you work up with devices and you don't have an office or a lab that you can get to as easily, or you can't have firmware engineers next to software engineers. Then next to electric countries to debug. Everybody really did so much to make those products happen. But with COVID, everybody was also going through a lot at home. So I think that was when I really, and I remember personally for me, where it really struck home was

• 19:47Speaker 00

  for me, one on ones are really important. I always want to try to make them. And my grandmother was living in Canada in an assisted living facility. And because of COVID, I couldn't travel to, to go visit her and they, they actually, no one could, you know, go into the nursing facilities during that time. And so the only way to have time with loved ones in that nursing home. FaceTime, but they were also super strapped on, you know, nurses and helpers. And so there are very few slots that you could get a FaceTime slot where, you know, someone can go in with an iPad. And you never knew what, when it would happen. And I remembered I literally, my aunt messaged me an hour before to go, okay, we got a FaceTime slot with grandma. But it was going to be with one of the one on ones I was supporting. And I felt really bad to say, I'm so sorry, last minute, I knew we were gonna

• 20:32Speaker 00

  discuss all these important things too, because we were both looking forward to it, but I said, my grandma, I get this FaceTime slot with her, is it okay for us to, you know, cancel? Remember him saying, oh yeah, sure, no problem. And I think for him, it was, he probably didn't even think of that as an act of kindness, like for him, it was, but for me, it had such amazing impact, like more than probably he would have known, because I was really struggling with, do I chat with grandma or because I never want to cancel a one on one?

• 21:01Speaker 00

  So that was kind of when it started. And so it comes from, everybody's probably going through a lot in their lives. We never know what somebody is going through. And so, and, and work is, we're all trying to, you know, like do our best and, and trying to do epic things, which are not going to be easy. So yeah, always thinking about in, in a world where you can be anything, be kind, just because we're all going through things that you, you know, like none of us have, have an idea about.

• 21:26Ryan Peterman?

  Transitioning to your, your experience at Anthropic. I'm curious, what excited you about Anthropic over all the other options? And why'd you join?

• 21:35Speaker 00

  Oh, so I was, as you could tell, I'm still a big VR fan. So I actually really loved working at Meta and, um, at, on VR, uh, on Horizon OS. And so I wasn't even looking for a new adventure. So there were no, I guess the only option would have been join Anthropic or stay, uh, working on VR. Yeah, because I, I was really happy working with amazing people, working on a product. I'm really passionate about it. So I feel very lucky about that. And so, yeah, internally, I was also using DevMate underneath. I think it was a sonnet model to, to build some tools to help out at work. And so I saw firsthand how this is just transformative. And I think at first, you might hear about it on the news, but until you experience it, it's not like a future thing, AI future.

• 22:20Speaker 00

  It's, it's already here. It's already changing how we work. So I was always very passionate about the space. But it was still hard for me to say farewell to Meta. And but it was just the more and more people I talked with at Anthropic. I was really drawn to how mission oriented everyone was. That actually reminded me of one reason why I joined, you know, Facebook and Facebook Marketplace back in 2015. And and yeah, being the environment where everybody is so mission aligned and really and all in just to to make sure we, you know, can build AI that benefits humanity with safety first. I was just really impressed with that mission orientedness. And it really appealed to, I love working on teams where everyone's mission driven and one team mentality.

• 23:04Speaker 00

  Um, so that was, yeah, like, uh, that was probably the the biggest draw for why then I I said farewell to Meta and joined Anthropic.

• 23:13Ryan Peterman?

  When you started at Facebook, it was very mission driven. Did the culture change over time when you were at Facebook or Meta?

• 23:23Speaker 00

  I think over time, the culture definitely, and and by the way, I think culture does change because it's a living, breathing thing. I used to give these, you know, Facebook AMA bootcamp talks. And I said, remember, culture is not just a poster on a wall. It's it's through your actions. So definitely, and and it makes sense, like as as Facebook grew, I think culture changed. I would say in terms of the the mission drivenness, there were still folks that are very passionate about what um, folks do like so, for example, everybody on VR really wanted to make VR successful. So that theme was still there. And I think it's always important to um, yeah, go back to, hey, what are you passionate about? Actually, this I remembered, I started feeling this way, it was around 2017.

• 24:06Speaker 00

  A lot of bootcampers were, you know, uh, asked me when I would take the Facebook Seattle shuttle in those days. Hey, I'm a boot camper. Can I chat with you, get you some advice? I'm looking for which team to join. And a lot of it was just which team do you think I can have the most impact? And and I remembered saying, hey, but what are you passionate about? You joined to do something because there's something you're passionate about or some mission you believe in. And and so that's why I think it's always important to think about, yeah, what is that passion or or what is the mission one is passionate about?

• 24:36Ryan Peterman?

  If you could have both, it's a no brainer. Like a team where there's impact and there's passion. But if you had to make the trade off, like, you know, one versus the other and you're advising someone who's joining a company, what would you say, like, how to navigate that? So like a less impactful role, but you're really passionate or, you know, it's extremely impactful, but you're like, I don't really wanna.

• 24:59Speaker 00

  You know, actually, I would say have that honest conversation with with yourself. And so with one on ones, I like to, anytime I'm supporting someone new, I mentioned, I like to ask them, hey, what do you look for in a manager partnership? What's worked well, what hasn't worked well? Another tool I use is then I ask, hey, what's important to you? And and what what's motivating to you? And there's no right answers or wrong answers. But I use that to learn what is important to someone because it's different for everyone. Because so for a person, it might be the really, I really want an impact or I really want to learn or I really want to work with great people. Like, just making sure you're sharing that with your manager so that you're not either guessing what's important to the other person

• 25:43Speaker 00

  when it may or may not be important.

• 25:45Ryan Peterman?

  So you've been onboarding at Entropic for two months at this point. I'm curious, is there any interesting insights in your onboarding or things that really stand out to you?

• 25:54Speaker 00

  Oh, definitely. I talked so much about mission, like, so before I joined, everybody that I met in the interview loops were great. And you do wonder, wow, is everybody truly this mission driven? Or is it, you know, like a tagline? Starting from day one onboarding, you see, oh, yeah, being mission driven to build AI that benefits all of humanity was a first is this big responsibility that's really on top of mind for everyone. So that was really like, it definitely was, okay, yeah, this is core part to the culture and DNA and and not just a slogan. So that definitely stood out. I would say joining Claude Code, the, the speed, I remember,

• 26:36Speaker 00

  I mean, I, I thought, I remember Marketplace days where I felt we moved really fast, like Claude Code, I mean, it could be a time warp, or maybe like, it just feels even faster. So that speed of iteration, and, and we're really fortunate on Claude Code because Anthropic, you know, everybody, you know, at Foods Claude Code, so we have a really, really high, you know, high amount of like, feedback. And so that loop of, I have an idea, let me build, let me launch internally. Okay, let me get feedback from end fooders. Okay, now let's launch to public and continue with the feedback. That like rapid iteration loop has, has really impressed me, and it's definitely something that's top of mind for me as we grow our team to, to keep up

• 27:21Speaker 00

  that agility and speed.

• 27:23Ryan Peterman?

  Coming to the end of the, the interview, I, I want to ask you a few career reflections. Was there ever a time where you received feedback and it really changed your career? And if so, what was the, the feedback?

• 27:36Speaker 00

  I would say actually, the, one of the most pivotal feedback I ever received was how to receive, was feedback on receiving feedback. So we're engineers, you know, we like to set breakpoints and debug and, and earlier on at Meta, and, you know, when someone would give feedback, I'm like, oh, I definitely want to get better. Let me ask more questions. I could debug the situation and, and replay the situation and, and figure out how I can improve. And someone gave me really good feedback of, hey, when, when someone cares enough to come to you for constructive feedback, it's already uncomfortable enough. Make sure that that first session, you're just in read-only mode, just to learn and listen. You may have questions, but save it for another day, because it's already uncomfortable for that person. You don't want

• 28:19Speaker 00

  to, anyone to ever feel like they have to justify the feedback. And so just pay atten-, you know, like, just give yourself the space, pay attention, listen. And that night, like, even if you have questions, hold on till the next day. Like, give yourself time to sit with the feedback and reflect. And that's been like, some of the best advice, because that really changed my approach of, you know, how to give and receive feedback.

• 28:44Ryan Peterman?

  And then last question is, if you could go back to when you just entered the industry and give yourself some advice, what would you say?

• 28:52Speaker 00

  I'm gonna say enjoy the ride. Like, you know, Michael Abash used to say, these are the good old days. So I would say, yeah, enjoy the ride and these are the good old days. Because you look back and everything happens so fast. Like, sometimes you don't look back and really enjoy the moment as you're living it.

• 29:08Ryan Peterman?

  Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time, Fiona. I really appreciate it.

• 29:11Speaker 00

  Thanks for coming by. It's awesome catching up again.

• 29:14Ryan Peterman?

  Thanks for listening to the podcast. I don't sell anything or do sponsorships, but if you want to help out with the podcast, you can support by engaging with the content on YouTube or on Spotify. If you want to drop a review, that'll be super helpful. And if there's any guests that you want to bring on to, please let me know. I feel like sourcing very senior ICs. There's no well-studied list out there on Google that I can just search this up. So if there's someone in your org or at your company who you really look up to and you want to hear their career story, let me know and I'll reach out to them.