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Tal Raviv

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2024-09-22
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2024-09-22
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  1. “And all of it requires paying more money. How are they going to feel? And so we didn't roll it out that way. We rolled out in smaller pieces and in different ways because we realized that's going to feel really shitty. You think about it, but practically speaking, or theoretically speaking, we didn't upsell anything, we didn't start to, you know, these are all things we already had built. Everything's above board. That's the perception that was going to happen.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “I would have made exactly the same mistake. Not a criticism. I would have probably made more mistakes. But that's like what opened my mind to, oh my God, you have to really think more than just logical, more than just like utilitarian. Another example of this is there was a company I worked that where all the features that were on a higher plan were invisible to the lower plans just because everything was built really fast and it was just, it was time to make them visible so people could upgrade. So we got that ready and we did this and we're about to release it and we realized tomorrow morning a bunch of customers are going to log into the product and there's all these features that they've been asking us for because they didn't know that we have them because they were locked and only on higher plan. Suddenly from their point of view the company built everything they'd asked for.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Actually, by the way, all the analyses proved out to be correct. All the models, all the predictions, everything played out in the numbers as predicted. The problem was the perception, the narrative behind it, what it looked like when you've logged into the product and you saw only the negative, but you didn't see all the positive because the positive was would happen 30 days later and you saw the negative immediately, a lot of things like that.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “In preparing for this, the company did a lot of analyses and just made sure that this was actually really good for customers and that this would only, like the numbers and the predictions and the models were like, this is a positive thing. And I know all the people that were involved were the most empathetic really did this because they really cared about this customer genuinely. I've never seen people that at the executive level, at the product level, at the data level. These are the people who really genuinely wanted the best for this customer. And they rolled out the change. And in reality, bottom line, there was a big revolt on the internet. It was a big deal and it was rolled back. And the bottom line why there's such a gap between every”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Yeah, this one comes out of a lot of mistakes I've made myself and seen around me as well. So I'm so guilty of this. BookSmart decision making as a PM is all the stuff we talk about all the time. That's data, you know, design, technology, strategy, frameworks, all that stuff. And it's really important. And that's why we're strong at it. Street smart decision making is taking all that and then Seeing something from somebody else's point of view. This goes beyond empathy. Giving the customers perception just as much weight as you would to logic. Really big example of this, and I won't I was at this company that changed the structure of the pricing. And the change was actually not meant to make more money. It was meant to unblock a payments roadmap and enable all these feature requests that were stuck behind this fundamental change.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “And here's the thing that's okay. Like, that's what that company needs to succeed in the market. You think about the Olympics, this is an analogy that came to mind recently. It's like, Let's say you can think like how a marathon runner looks and how a swimmer looks right. They have very different. You can spot them in the row of athletes. And if you imagine product being a lap muscle, that's product department. You can be a lap muscle for a marathon runner. You can be one for a swimmer. And a marathon runner needs one and it needs to work. Where do you want to be that lat muscle? On the swimmer on the marathon runner.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “When I graduated from college, a friend gave me advice. He was like, don't be a finance guy at a tech company and don't be a tech guy at a finance company. This was 2009, so, anyways”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Exactly. And that department, if you're, whatever role you have, if you're in that department for that company, that's going to be your career defining work. That's why it's so worth it. You're going to attract the best colleagues, your careers are going to have a step function jump. It's a totally different experience.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Of all, look at what really drives the growth, like what's the growth model. What are the levers? Ask those questions. How does it work? Ask officially and ask as part of your back channeling and reference checking. And the second thing is if you're really seriously checking out a company, evaluating a company. Truly understand that customer and like, what are they actually paying for in this industry? What is the thing? What is the real value that they're getting? Clearly, they're paying for a product or a service, but beyond that, what are they actually paying for? Ask those questions, and I think that'll make it clear.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Another company that I worked at, looking back, what made them win in the market was marketing and engineering, like scalability. So product sometimes is on this list. So, one of the companies I worked at, like I mentioned, product design product, if that department does 10x impact, then the company will succeed 10x in the market. But in my career, it mostly hasn't been product. Product has to do a good job, but it's not the biggest lever for that company, even though it's a tech product company. And I think this really crystallized for me when I finally worked in a company where product is that department. You feel that.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Product did a 10x job, it wouldn't be a 10x outcome for the company over the decade. But for example, it could be if marketing did a 10x job, the company would have a 10x outcome over the decade. And I started to observe this over the years and I noticed it's roughly usually like two things, two companies, sorry, two departments. It's roughly like two departments that this boils down to in each company. So I'll just make this really concrete without naming names. The companies that I work that the two departments at one company was product design and support. If those two departments work 10x, then the company would win. Another company was Data Accuracy and Customer Success. Another company was the thing that made them win in the market was trust slash brand, like a trusted brand, and payments.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “So, yeah, over time, working at a bunch of hypergrowth companies, I've started to notice that there's some departments that Are the reason that company won the market? Also started to realize that, and this is sometimes true of the department that I'm in product, that even if”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Yeah, this is a passion project I'm working on with Maven, the learning platform. It's a course called Build Your Personal PM productivity system. And it really goes super deep and super practical into these topics exactly, like how to design your time, how to manage yourself, how to manage your emotions, how to cultivate self-reliant teams, how to give feedback and create a product org with less overhead on you as a PM. And yeah, the idea is to just take all these topics and just make this really, really, really hands-on.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “And what you see is over time, some people more than others, but they start to just naturally want to do that themselves, ask you for that access, start to do those things. Hey, I did this and I wrote the JIR ticket for it. I did this and I did the data analysis. And that rose over time.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “I don't know if I would call it coaching. It's like a lot, like you said, just a lot of little behaviors. So one thing I try to do along those lines is when there's something that's on me to do for someone or like the next logical step, I try to do that live with them. So somebody asked me a question about, hey, what does the data show about this? If we want that direction, I'm like, I don't know. Let's find out instead of saying, hey, I'll get back to you. Let's open mix panel. Let's play around with this. And I don't tell them, hey, it would be great if you just show them how easy it was. Like, hey, if I could figure this out, like, you know, this Fisher price data for PMs, like this, you could totally figure this out. That's what I'm trying to imply by showing it. Or, you know, if it's a, write a, create a Jira ticket just to make something happen quickly and document it. Like, hey, let's just do this together on the call right now and make sure I get it right.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “One thing that I try to do is when somebody takes something that would be my job and does that, like whether it's on the design side, they lean in more or on the engineering side, they lean in more, people bring ideas, or they say, hey, I took the liberty of doing this. It could be as small as something bureaucratic or as big as an idea or suggestion. I just shower them with positivity. I just show them just how excited I am that they did that. I just want that to happen again and then to feel even more bold. And just like when somebody takes something off your plate, when somebody, you know, does kind of the PM, what you think is like, that's PM thinking. What are you doing? Right. Just really want them to feel that that is extremely welcome.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Yeah, there's a great phrase I heard a mentor once say, which is culture over process. Process is important, and some of these need process to scaffold until you build the culture. Think it's like you view, you got to view the team as this asset you're building, right? This culture is an asset that you're building and you're investing in it and you're cultivating it. And you want to build something that's stronger than that's a great example. A CX person or salesperson is just directly messaging an engineer or just asking for something. You want to build something that's resilient to that. Like that's the real product that you're building as a PM, I think, is the team that builds the product and is resilient to all those things. It doesn't happen overnight. It's not going to happen in the first quarter that the team has formed, but it happens over time gradually with little messages and little interactions and positive feedback. And asking people to work a little bit differently and giving them a reason why and building trust. And I think that success in my job is to build a very self-reliant team that's very resilient to all those things I would otherwise, you know, like you said, to keep me up.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Team can search the channel and find the answer later, right? It can help other people. And if you do this enough, it becomes a snowball effect because other people on the team will see that other people are posting in public channels and feel more comfortable with it. And that just becomes a chain reaction.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “So, one of the things that I really put a lot of energy into is really encouraging people to get conversations out of direct messages and into channels. This is a really important way to cultivate people just working together and figuring things out in between one another. And anytime somebody sends me a direct message, I say, this is a great question. Can you please put it in this channel with the team? I'll answer there, but it's really important for me that any decisions we make are transparent. that it's easy to find it later, that there's a few other people who should probably chime in if they want to. And this could be at the team level. I work at a company that had really, really big customer success organization. They'd constantly find you as a PM and just DM you these questions. And I say, great question. Put it in this really big channel. That way, you know, give a reason. So that way other people and customers...”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Are there a lot of situations where clearly you're the bottleneck, like your attention, your ability to get to something is the bottleneck? And a lot of people are waiting on you. Do you find a lot of communication is happening in direct messages with you instead of public channels for the team? Are a lot of working meetings just like you and one other person on the team instead of maybe two or three? Not too many either. All those are like opportunities where you can create a different situation where a culture on the team where people are figuring things out between themselves and maybe involving you at the very end.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Passing things through. So, first of all, that's like a fundamental mindset. It's really important for each team to have, to be more high leveraged as an IC. The second thing is personally to seek to not be needed, but be valuable. And the difference is. Like, if you think about your day as a product manager Look for situations where is there a game of telephone that's constantly passing through me?”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “I really try to have that as the cornerstone of a culture of any team that I'm on. I had a new teammate come up to me recently. He just joined and he was on engineering. And he came with me excitedly. And he's like, I found a case that you didn't think about. And I was like, okay, awesome. But let's talk about language. Product is not a role. It's a team. whatever it is i don't even know what it is but everything that we own like it's uh both design was involved engineering was super involved you know yes i was there and it's let's call it hey i found a way to improve the product or hey i i found something that we didn't think about it's really really important so first of all like that language that culture that you know it's not like this hub and spoke model and like the pm is at the center and making all these decisions and um”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “I believe in cultivating very self reliant teams. And I think that's really key to having a lot more leverage in IC, being able to manage multiple teams if needed on much bigger areas of the product. I think the key of that is having this mindset that product isn't a role, it's a team. And I read a quote once by Ebby Atawori. And she's worked on Netflix and Uber and she's super experienced and she says something like, it's not about waiting for products. You know, products said this or that or waiting for product. Like we're all product.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “And I already have a bunch of really in the weeds real world clues to start with and even persuade people that we should dig deeper into this. Or, for example, another advantage is that if I'm on a conversation with a person from sales or CSM, from customer success, and they'll mention a request, I can open that up and I'm like, yeah, this is actually this client and that client and that client also mentioned that. You see like in their face that they feel heard. Like you've been listening all this time. Like you've been writing this down. It's a really, I think that's really important as well.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “I personally keep a weird habit. I realize it's a weird habit. I call it product scrapbooking, where I have this massive notion database of every opportunity big or small that's ever come up. And when a piece of evidence out in the world comes in, it could be like a support ticket or like a CSM sends a gong call or there's a really great Slack thread with like an amazing brainstorm happening and ideas piece of data, whatever it is, right, I'll file it. I actively take a screenshot or whatever as I file it and I start to cluster these in this like really messy notion. And the reason I do this is that I've learned that we have these like roadmaps and strategies that seem linear, but life and customers and insights are not. So when the time does come around to work on that thing and that opportunity comes up, I can pull up that notion.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Yes, usually when I share this, people are like, well, what if something urgent happens and people are looking for you? This has happened. Like twice a year. You realize how not urgently needed the PM role ever is. And first of all, over time, people really respect it. They learned that this is how you work and they come to really respect this. And second, the key people that I work with have my phone number. And I tell them, you know, feel free to call me at any time if I'm not on Slack, if you really need a response. Just call me WhatsApp me, whatever it takes. And first of all, it's like a barrier, right? It's not like a quick message. So it really is only for urgent stuff. And, you know, I have twice a year, I'll get like a WhatsApp message from my manager, from my team lead, hey, something urgent is happening in Slack. Like, we really need you. And then I'll open Slack. I'll violate my rule. It's totally fine. But that's so rare the system works for me.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Before noon, because I needed to send a message. And then I realized all these messages don't need to be sent before noon, right? Just because I thought it at 11 a.m. doesn't mean I need to send it at 11 a.m. There's no urgency at that level. So I actually keep a section of my to-do list, which is when I open Slack, here are the messages I'm going to send. And I write them as if I'm about to hit enter in Slack, but they're in my to-do list. Sometimes if I really, really, really rare moments, I'll need to check something. I'll ask the person next to me, like, hey, can you go into this channel and just show me that thing? Because all their notifications don't trigger my brain into scrambled eggs again.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “And I don't open Slack before noon. I've been doing this for eight years. I don't open Slack at all to the, it gets really extreme, to the point where if I need to send a message, like it usually fails, I usually open Slack.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “So, the way I think about this How you manage your own time, how you design your days, your energy, your focus, and then your team and how you build that culture and those habits to just give you a lot of leverage as an IC. So that still as one person, you know, own a lot of scope, you can influence a lot, you can manage a lot. So personally, for my time, I really believe, and I think you've written about this as well, in actively designing your days. And for me, I really strictly split my days between deep work and what I call ping pong or ping pong, you can imagine it's like when you open Slack and it's just constant hitting the valve back and forth, it makes your brain feel like scrambled eggs. You're not going to be doing any deep thinking or reading or strategy. For me, I'm a morning person and I block off my morning from meetings. You know, a lot of people give that tip. I go even further.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “He sent it to me, he sent it to me on Slack. He's like, this is how I want it written. So the first thing I did, I opened a new thread in ChatGPT, and I said, you know, you're an expert, product manager, product owner. This is the template that we want to use for user stories. Do you understand hit enter? It's like cool, I get it. And then I start to talk about the changes we want to make.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “It's built into ChatGPT's desktop app and mobile apps. Like if you dig that, if you dictate that way, I also have a desktop app on my own that I use because it's just such a great transcription model. It's open source free, provided by OpenAI.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Created that user story in that format with all those cases, I would have taken me so long to write. And I would say the thing that We still really needed a person for was deciding how to break up this really, really big change into those stories, like what is the logical way to split it up engineering-wise, which my team lead. But once you have that, like each one individually worked really, really well. So I'm now experimenting with taking the transcript. I tried this actually, experimenting with taking the transcript of the actual kickoff that we did and that we recorded on Riverside and had to transcribe and I copied it and put it into ChatGPT. It didn't work as well. So I'm experiment tweaking it to see how far can we push this.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “So many things I need to change. It's overwhelming. And would either delay the team, I would be the bottleneck, or we just have to split it up. And what we did is we took that template. My team lead said, hey, this is the template I would love. I gave it to ChatGPT. I said, you know, you're an expert PM, product owner, Scrum Master, whatever. This is the template. Do you understand? It's like, yeah, let's go. And then I said, well, actually, before we get going, I want to tell you, I'm like, you know, holding down like the dictation button. He used a whisper AI to dictate. And I was like, you know, let me just tell you a little bit more background. I just like started talking to it. I would for a developer, you know, joining the team. And I just started to talk about why we're doing it and so on. I was like, so do you understand that? I was like, yeah, cool. Let's go. And then I said, okay, well, the first thing is we're going to change this area and it's going to work like this. And it's really important that this and this happens. And I just talked supernaturally to it, just like I would to a person. And when I was done, I hit enter and it.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “So, like high level, why we're doing this usability studies, the design, the vision, all that stuff we did without AI that was me, director of design and our founder, but then it came time for the Rupper meets the road. We did a kickoff with the engineers. Everybody's bought in, everybody's excited. And now we need to really make sure that things are really, really well defined and very, very clear and easy for testing afterwards and just make all that stuff the high level stuff really really specific. And so that means user stories in JIRA in this case, right, for this team, that's how they prefer to work. And a specific format they've asked for. And so it's like a story and there's, it's called like Gherkin. I'm learning this too. This is new to me. Given this, when that, then that, it's really tedious. When it's small, it's actually really fun to write because it makes you think. But when you have,”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “Corvette, transcribe that, and like feed that in. We're playing around with that as well. You can imagine what might have taken 10 years ago, five years ago. A director organization, like a director level organization, and everybody reporting to that director to achieve something could probably be achieved with an IC now. And I think this ties in because the product career path is going to be even less about people management and just more and more about leadership, right? Like the core of product manager skills.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “Just this week, I have an example of my team. I have one team that's trying to introduce much more rigorous Scrum as it hires a lot more developers. Part of that is a lot more paperwork as a product manager. In some companies, it's a whole role that they hire just to do that. And what we did is basically took ChatGPT, told it the format of the stories and epics and so on, and tried something where I just dictated and spoke as if I was doing a kickoff. And I just talked naturally. And out, just put out all this really, really, really amazing detailed stories and so on. And just had to edit it a little bit. So that was like a moment for me. Like, okay, that would have taken either dividing the team into smaller pieces or multiple product managers to be able to keep up. And obviously the next step is like, we just take the actual kickoff.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “We've seen the last couple years. I think you had on here Nikhil Singhal talking about when Facebook had those really big layoffs that they were biased towards keeping individual contributor. And I've seen here at Riverside during that same time, founders talking about how they were just really looking for can we just find some really, really senior experienced people who want to stay hands-on. Like that would be the dream, right? I also have heard from friends in the market that the hiring market that there's just a lot more experienced people competing for the same IC roles as a result of all that. So I do think that the result of that is a lot of I think the result of that is like being a 10x pm, for example, is becoming more and more table stakes, especially like you mentioned with AI. That's just the tailwind for all of that.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “Amazon too. Yeah, I think those are like the exception, not the rule. But yeah, I think putting it into words really helps.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “The ones I've seen on LinkedIn is there's product manager, senior product manager, principal product manager. I've seen a distinguished product manager last year. Oh, yeah.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “Have the titles. I think having good titles that are clear that you can move up into, first of all, just like creates it as an idea that there is progress, creating clear levels and rubric just like you would for within any level or within any title. I think saying it out loud, recognizing it, I think it's just like at the end of the day, we all want respect. We all want to feel that we're growing. to feel that that's recognized. So I think putting it in words goes a really long way.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “Expert. And that's step one really understand that you are really, really, really valuable as an IC. I think Tactically speaking, one thing that I've done a few times, different interview rounds is when it comes to compensation, you've probably heard the line, well, that's a really high number, but we can't reach it, but don't worry, we're growing a lot. The product order is going to grow a lot. There's going to be a lot of opportunities to rise into management. So there's going to be a lot of opportunities to increase compensation over time. And that took a classic line you might hear from a recruiter or hiring manager. And in those moments, It's kind of like puts you in a weird position where it's like, well, you know, you don't think you're going to rise up. You can't debate that so well. And what I say in those moments is, you know, I'm glad you mentioned that. I actually have no intention of going into management or rising up in those ranks. And I know that, you know, you and I know that the industry traditionally undervalues the IC role. So it's really important for me to have that number now.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “I think first of all, you have to believe your worth. Like, you have to genuinely believe and understand that an individual contributor in product management is worth can have a really big scope, really big ownership, really big impact. And matters a lot. And I think the industry is coming around to that, right? We'll talk a little bit more about this, but the great flattening of the last few years. I've seen talking to friends who are founders and the founders here at Riverside are really looking for people really experienced who are really hands-on. First of all, we just need people who get stuff done. And just recognizing that in yourself and believing that and recognizing that in the industry and remembering there's a really good analogy here in engineering, right? Where it really makes sense to all of us that like you shouldn't have to rise into management in order to increase your compensation. You're equally just as valuable, right? Not as a manager as like a domain.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “So different and interesting. And purpose is one that I. Took for granted in the past, and I learned how important it is. I think if you feel that you're building something that you really want to see happen in the world and you really want to make sure it's done well, you're like, you're like, don't trust anybody else to do it. You want to be the one to work on it and make sure that this gets done well in the world because it matters to you, then I think you're in a really strong place from that point of view. That really gets you motivated and you want to be hands-on and it keeps you really focused.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “I think the big elephant in the room is compensation. I think that's like, you know, whenever I have this discussion with friends and colleagues, that's always the, well, there's two things. There's compensation and there's, can it be interesting that you get sick of it? So I think that classic book drive motivation comes from autonomy, mastery, and purpose. And I think for me, the IC role, it's definitely very autonomous. It's one of being a product manager is one of the most autonomous roles and most amount of agency you can ask for. I think mastery, I once heard Marty Kagan say in a workshop, product manager was just one of those roles where you can just keep doing it for a really long time because it just gets changing and you can change industries right without having background in it. The situation changes every time you do it in every different context. It's just”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “I won't lie over the years, despite everything I said. If somebody who is my same amount of experience or same cohort and gets promoted and becomes a team lead and makes that decision and rises up, it does twang in my stomach. It gets in my ego. I have that moment where I'm like, wait a minute. And then I say to myself, okay, so go for it, you know, tell your manager you changed your mind or whatever it is needs to happen. And then I'm like, well, do I actually want? I kind of get back to that same logic of like, I don't actually want that. So if I could push a button and switch with them, I wouldn't. But definitely, definitely, you know. Very human at the same time”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “Pattern where they've gone to team lead or director and so on, and their next role, they request to be an IC. Like they insist on being an IC. Yeah, so that's from the tech world, that's what informs that. And the values I had growing up, just watching my dad, he's a researcher, he's a professor, and he just has a blast every day. He refuses to retire. He's just so enthusiastic about what he does. And he's never aspired to be like a chairman, provost like that. He just loves what he does and he's stayed there. I just see the joy, like the fun.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “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 going to make me excited to wake up in the morning, right? Not every single day, not all the time, but for most of my days that I work, what's going to make me hop out of bed and just kind of follow that. And over time, as I got to, you know, have different managers and different product leaders that I've worked with. I've never looked at their schedule or their days or how they spend the highest percentage of their time and said, wow, that's what I want to be doing. If I compare their days with mine and the stuff they're busy with and focused on. And at the same time over the years, I've also noticed that the colleagues that I identify with the most, like the ones where I just feel I most relate to them, many of them have that same”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “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 to Twitter for a while. What's going on in Twitter? And I see that the notifications number is like maxed out. It's like 999 plus or whatever. And I was like, wait, what? And I clicked the notifications tab and I see the first tweet has at ceo handle fired at Tal Raviv. And I saw that that has like a ton of retweets. And I keep scrolling down and I start to piece together the story.”

    2024-09-22 · Lenny's Podcast · Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source