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Building the most AI-pilled engineering team in the world | Fiona Fung (Manager of the Claude Code and Cowork Teams)

Overview

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Building the most AI-pilled engineering team in the world | Fiona Fung (Manager of the Claude Code and Cowork Teams)

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

4 HOURS AGO
Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

4 HOURS AGO
OverviewShownoteHighlightsTranscriptChaptersPins

Shownote

Fiona Fung leads the teams behind Claude Code and Cowork at Anthropic (overseeing Boris Cherny and the entire engineering and PM team). Before Anthropic, she spent 11 years at Microsoft building Visual Studio and TypeScript and then moved to Meta, where sh...

Highlights

Fiona Fung, who leads the Claude Code and Cowork teams at Anthropic, discusses how AI is transforming software engineering. She shares insights from her 25-year career at Microsoft, Meta, and Anthropic, focusing on how AI shifts the bottleneck from coding to ambition and the new challenges of managing high-throughput teams.
00:00
AI shifts bottleneck from coding to ambition
07:49
Coding is no longer the bottleneck.
09:31
Claude Code gives full visibility across repos and Slack
12:26
Routines generate summaries and even PRs for me to review.
14:44
AI makes test-driven development more efficient
16:56
Deep subject matter expertise for verification
18:19
AI shifts mindset from limits to ambition
19:40
Lean into curiosity, focus on what you can control.
30:33
AI can be a light in the dark
34:40
Capitalize on unexpected user behaviors.
35:08
AI routines automate daily management tasks.
38:10
Agency and accountability are key.
39:47
Focus on the problem, not the metrics.
44:25
Monitoring and tests beat extended code review.
52:24
Leaders must use their own products
55:25
Engineers' coding skills atrophying due to AI
58:47
Engineers lose the joy of deep focus and flow state
1:03:01
AI is blurring engineering and product roles
1:03:47
Dogfooding keeps you connected to the user experience.
1:11:06
Blocking focus time needed to catch up with agents
1:15:33
Build at the edge of capability to stay ahead.
1:17:59
Maintain a one team mentality with diverse perspectives
1:22:55
Kill processes that no longer serve you.
1:32:22
In a world where you can be anything, be kind.

Chapters

Introduction to Fiona Fung
00:00
How the engineering role has transformed over 25 years
02:31
What an AI-pilled software team looks like in 2026
09:28
Using Claude to manage and review team output
12:26
The evolution of code review and verification
14:40
Who to hire: creative builders and deep systems experts
16:55
The shift to ambitious thinking
18:18
The growth mindset required to thrive in AI-native teams
19:40
Helping small businesses adopt AI tools
25:52
How Anthropic spots latent demand and builds for it
31:46
The next frontier: asynchronous work with AI routines
35:08
Agency and accountability in AI-native teams
38:06
The vibe shift from token-maxing to ROI measurement
39:40
The “bad vs. sad” quality framework
44:24
Why all managers start as ICs at Anthropic
49:34
Preventing skill atrophy
55:24
Managing context switching with 20 AI agents running
58:43
How PM and data science roles are transforming
1:00:08
The importance of dogfooding and using your own product
1:03:40
Outstanding questions
1:08:36
The future of engineering jobs and education
1:12:48
What keeps Fiona up at night: team culture at scale
1:17:59
From six-month roadmaps to JIT (just-in-time) monthly planning
1:22:53
Lightning round
1:27:03

Transcript

Lenny Rachitsky: Anthropic engineers, on average, have eight times as much code per quarter as they did compared to 2025. Fiona Fung: Coding is no longer the bottleneck. It's lifted the ceiling of what anyone is able to do. Lenny Rachitsky: Everything is...