Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside)
Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career
Lenny Rachitsky
5 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 22 September 2024
⏱️ 91 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tal Raviv is a product manager at Riverside, where he joined as its first PM. Over his 12-year career as an individual contributor, Tal has been an early PM at Patreon, AppsFlyer, and Wix, working in consumer growth, developer API platforms, and pricing. He started his career by co-founding a profitable SaaS company and also volunteers as a surf instructor for people with disabilities. In our conversation, Tal shares:
• Why he has chosen to stay an individual contributor rather than moving into management
• The rise of “super ICs” and how companies can support this career path
• Advice for succeeding as a long-term IC product manager
• How he uses AI to enhance his productivity
• How to build self-reliant teams and make yourself redundant
• Lessons from failures
• Much more
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Find the transcript and show notes at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-super-ic-pm-tal-raviv
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Where to find Tal Raviv:
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/talsraviv/
• Maven course: https://maven.com/tal-raviv/product-manager-productivity-system/
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Where to find Lenny:
• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
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In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Tal’s background
(02:24) Choosing to stay an IC project manager
(07:05) The value of IC roles
(08:31) Compensation and career path
(12:37) Advice for companies on creating space for ICs
(14:33) Leveraging AI for productivity
(22:44) Build your personal PM productivity system
(37:39) Contrarian opinions and insights
(44:32) Book smart vs. street smart decision-making
(51:51) There’s no one right way to get things done
(57:03) Failure corner
(01:19:04) Lightning round
(01:26:50) Living through conflict
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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.
Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I've had thousands of people tag my CEO on Twitter calling on him to fire me. |
| 0:05.4 | I was actually on vacation and I got bored and I was like I haven't logged into |
| 0:09.4 | Twitter, I haven't posted anything in Twitter for a while, what's going on on Twitter? |
| 0:12.4 | And I see that the notification... posted anything in Twitter for a while. What's going on on Twitter? |
| 0:12.6 | And I see that the notifications number |
| 0:16.0 | is like maxed out. |
| 0:16.8 | It's like 999 plus or whatever. |
| 0:19.2 | And I was like, wait, what? |
| 0:20.4 | And I click the notifications tab. |
| 0:22.1 | And I see the first tweet is has at CEO |
| 0:25.7 | handle fired at tall review and I saw that that has like a ton of retweets and I just keep |
| 0:30.4 | scrolling down and I start to piece together the story. I just |
| 0:33.6 | rolling down and start to piece together the story. Today my guest is Tall Reviv. This is a very |
| 0:39.1 | special episode for me because Tall was one of the first and most active community members when I was just starting my newsletter slack community and as a PM I have admired from afar for a very long time he's got some really unique and insightful takes on how to be a great product leader and interestingly he's |
| 0:54.9 | decided to stay an IC product manager throughout his entire career up to this point |
| 0:59.3 | which is over 12 years as an ICPM I've never met anyone anyone that stayed in IC for this long. He's been a PM at Patreon, at Wicks, at |
| 1:07.4 | APS, and most recently joined Riverside as their first ever product manager. |
| 1:11.5 | Riverside, by the way way is the platform that I |
| 1:13.2 | used to record my podcast so this was kind of a meta experience for both of us. He's also |
| 1:17.6 | former founder and outside of tech he volunteers as a surf instructor for people |
| 1:21.8 | with disabilities. |
| 1:23.0 | In our conversation, we talk in depth about the IC career path, |
... |
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