The Two Departments That Matter Test
Find the 1-2 departments whose 10x effort produces a 10x company outcome, then work there.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 90%
Every company has only one or two departments where a 10x improvement translates into a 10x market outcome over a decade; the rest can excel and it barely moves the needle. Your career-defining work happens only when you are inside one of those departments. This is a lens for choosing which company (and which team within it) to join based on where leverage actually lives, not on job title.
Origin
Developed by Tal Raviv from observing multiple hypergrowth companies (Patreon, Wix, AppsFlyer, Riverside) over 12 years as an IC PM. He credits the framing partly to hearing Nikhil Singhal discuss Facebook biasing layoffs toward keeping ICs.
Core principles
- 01A department doing 10x work only matters if that 10x compounds into a 10x company outcome.
- 02Product is frequently NOT one of the two departments, even at a 'tech product company.'
- 03Being in the growth-driving department gives you better colleagues, a step-function career jump, and career-defining work.
- 04'Engineering-driven / product-driven / sales-driven' company labels are really statements about which department drives growth.
How to run it
- 1
Map the growth model
Ask directly and via back-channel/reference checks: what actually drives this company's growth? What are the levers? Which team runs the experiments that move the number?
Pro tip Ask officially AND unofficially — the org chart and the real answer often differ.
- 2
Find what the customer is really paying for
Go beyond the obvious product/service. In this industry, what is the real value the customer buys? Trust? Data accuracy? Brand? Distribution? That points at the department that wins the market.
- 3
Identify the one or two departments
Isolate the ~2 departments where a 10x effort yields a 10x company outcome. Examples Raviv gives: product+design+support at one company; data accuracy+customer success at another; trust/brand+payments at a third; marketing+engineering-scalability at a fourth.
Watch out A department can do great work and still not be a growth lever — good work there is necessary but not career-defining.
- 4
Position yourself inside the lever
Join a company where your function IS one of those two departments. If you can't, accept that your role is to serve the actual levers well rather than expecting empowered-PM autonomy.
Pro tip Being a salesperson at a sales-driven company beats being a PM at a sales-driven company.
In the wild
Raviv compares a product department to a lat muscle: a marathon runner and a swimmer both have lats and both need them to work, but they're built very differently and the muscle matters far more to one than the other. You have to decide whose lat you want to be.
→ Reframes 'why am I just a feature factory?' as a placement problem, not a performance problem.
Common mistakes
Assuming a tech company is product-driven
PMs read empowered-team books and expect autonomy, then get frustrated at a company where product isn't the growth lever. That frustration is misplaced — the company genuinely needs product to just execute, and that's fine.
Is it for you?
Best for
A senior PM or operator choosing which company or team to join and wanting career-defining, high-leverage work.
Not ideal for
Someone who values a specific mission or lifestyle over maximizing career leverage, or a junior person who should prioritize learning breadth first.
From the transcript
“it's roughly like two departments that this boils down to in each company”
“even if you know product did a 10x job you know it wouldn't be a 10x outcome for the company over the decade but for…”
“first first of all look at what really drives the growth like what's the growth model”
“truly understand that customer and like what are they actually paying for in this industry”
From the episode
Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor
Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside)