Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside)
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What is Tal Raviv’s background and why did he stay an individual‑contributor PM?
I've had thousands of people tag my CEO on Twitter, calling on him to fire me. I was actually on vacation and I got bored and I was like, I haven't logged into Twitter. I haven't posted anything on Twitter for a while. What's like what's going on on Twitter? And I see that the uh notifications number is like maxed out. It's like nine nine nine plus or whatever. And I was like, wait, what? And I click the notifications tab and I see the first tweet is has at CEO handle fired at Tall Reviv. And I saw that that has like a ton of retweets. And I just keep scrolling down and I start to piece together the story.
Today, my guest is Tal Raviv. This is a very special episode for me because Tal was one of the first and most active community members when I was just starting my newsletter Slack community, and as a PM I've 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 decided to stay an IC product manager throughout his entire career up to this point, which is over 12 years. An IC PM. I've never met anyone that's stayed in IC for this long. He's been a PM at Patreon, at Wix, at Apps Flyer, and most recently joined Riverside as their first ever product manager. Riverside, by the way, is the platform that I use to record my podcast, so this was kind of a meta experience for both of us.
He's also a former founder, and outside of tech, he volunteers as a surf instructor for people with disabilities. In our conversation, we talk in-depth about the IC career path, a bunch of tactical advice on how to be more productive as a PM, including a killer example of how he uses ChatGPT to scale himself. Tal also explains why every tech company has just two departments that matter: the difference between book smart decisions and street smart decisions. We also spend the most time I've ever spent in Failure Corner, where Tall shares all of the times that he's failed in his career and how. those experiences made up stronger and it was really important for him to share these things because he wants people to understand that successful people fail a lot and those failures make you better.
If you want to learn more from Tall, he's actually about to launch a course on Maven that's called Build Your PM Productivity System, which based on the conversation that we had, I am confident is gonna be awesome. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to follow it and subscribe in your favorite podcast. app or YouTube, it's the best way to avoid missing future episodes and helps the podcast tremendously. With that, I bring you Tall Review. Tal, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast. Uh
thank you. It's great to be here. This is uh long time in the making.
It has been a long time in the making. You're interesting in so many ways. We're going to talk about a lot of different things. One of the things that makes you most unique and interesting as a PM is that you've stayed an IC product manager for your entire career for 12 years. I don't think I've ever met a PM that's been an IC for 12 years. I imagine you've had many opportunities to be promoted. I imagine this has been very intentional. And I also know a lot of people actually think about this a lot. Should I move it to management? Can I stay in IC and be successful. So I'm gonna spend some time here to start. And my first question is just why? Why have you decided to stay in IC? Why have you not moved into manage?
I don't really have a strategy for my career. Like my strategy is not to have a strategy. For the longest time I've gone by Am I excited to wake up in the morning and what's gonna make me excited to wake up in the morning? Right. Not every single day, not all the time, but for most of my you know days that I work, uh what's gonna make me you know hop out of bed and just kind of follow that and Over time as I got to, you know, have different managers um and different uh product leaders that I worked with, I've never looked at their schedule or their days or how they spend the highest, you know, high percentage of their time um and said, Wow, that's what I wanna be doing.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is Tal Raviv’s background and why did he stay an individual‑contributor PM?
0:00–12:32
2
How does Tal explain the value of staying an IC product manager versus moving into management?
12:32–23:34
3
What advice does Tal give about compensation and career paths for long‑term IC PMs?
23:34–35:41
4
How does Tal use AI tools like ChatGPT to boost his personal productivity as a PM?
35:41–47:16
5
What strategies does Tal use to build self‑reliant teams and make himself redundant?
47:16–58:31
6
What are Tal’s most memorable failure stories and the lessons he learned from them?
58:31–1:09:18
7
What contrarian opinions and hot takes does Tal share about product decision‑making?
1:09:18–1:21:15
8
What life motto does Tal live by and how does it guide his work and personal life?
1:21:15–1:31:19
Speakers
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