I recently dove into a compelling conversation featuring Amber Feng, the co-founder and CTO of Cocoon, who was previously an engineering leader at Stripe for eight years. As I reflected on her journey, I found actionable takeaways for anyone navigating an engineering career — whether you’re optimizing your IC craft, stepping into management, or exploring the founder path.
What resonated first was how her experiences span the full spectrum — from individual contributor, to engineering manager, to heading up entire orgs, and then back to individual contributor again. I’ve seen similar arcs on my own teams, and the highest-impact engineers consistently share unexpected traits: they obsess over customer problems, communicate with crisp clarity, manage energy as carefully as time, and treat stakeholder alignment as a core skill. Those behaviors compound across levels, and they’re as valuable in product discovery as they are in product roadmapping and sprint planning.
We also get into the perennial debate many engineers face — whether to hone your craft and become an expert IC, or go the management route. Amber’s gone back and forth between the two, and her experience mirrors what I advise during the IC to manager transition: map your strengths to the type of impact you want to drive. If you thrive on deep focus, complex systems, and technical leverage, the IC path can be your force multiplier. If you’re energized by coaching talent, orchestrating outcomes vs output OKRs, and building cross-functional momentum, management might be your best lane. In either path, revisit the decision periodically — careers aren’t one-way doors.
Another thread I appreciated was how she approaches scope and ownership. Whether you’re shipping as an IC or leading as a manager, momentum comes from framing problems tightly, sequencing bets, and reducing operational drag. I often encourage teams to use a simple try do consider framework to prioritize learning loops, and to treat developer evangelism, forward deployed engineers, and founder-led GTM as strategic tools to accelerate product-market fit lessons.
Finally, we turn the page to the most recent chapter — becoming a first-time founder. Amber shared the lessons from Stripe’s Patrick Collison that she’s applying to her own company Cocoon, and her words of wisdom for engineers with interest in starting their own company from 0 to 1 align with my experience: start with a painfully specific problem, tighten feedback cycles, and keep GTM simple before you scale. Early on, zero to one B2B marketing is about credibility, not campaigns; talk to users, ship obvious value, and let your product creator mindset guide the roadmap.
If you’re exploring co-founding dynamics, you can read the First Round Review article Amber mentioned with the co-founder questionnaire here: https://review.firstround.com/the-founder-dating-playbook-heres-the-process-i-used-to-find-my-co-founder
You can follow Amber on Twitter at @amfeng
In sum, whether you identify as an IC, manager, or future founder, the most sustainable careers are portfolio-shaped: evolve your role as your strengths and context change, measure progress by outcomes, and invest in systems that make great work easier to repeat.
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