This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)
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Why does Tom say “we regret that product management exists” at Whatnot?
As tech companies scaled, somewhere along the line, this HR ratio of a pod popped into being. Every time you hire six engineers, you add a designer, you add a PM. Hiring so many PMs infantilizes the engineers and the designers who are perfectly capable of making good decisions, but just never had to because there was always a PM to babysit them.
Something you wrote online that surprised a lot of people, a whatnot product team, was built on the somewhat simple premise. We regret that product management exists.
Not a thing you probably hear from a lot of CPOs. We articulate it that way to force ourselves to remember that you don't hire a PM just for the sake of hiring one. You hire one where there's really specific need. It is better to not assume we need a PM in every place. The only argument for why you would want product management to be a specialist function is really it's a trade, not a qualification. It's something you get good at by doing. It's a muscle. But the flip side of that is the more you abstract your engineers and your designers from doing the same thing, their muscle gets underdeveloped.
He also wrote this brutal quote. In the last two years, 31,832 people applied to be a product manager and whatnot. We hired one.
What does he look for in the folks that you hire? I can tell you what's definitely trending down. Folks who spend a lot of their time in their interviews talking about driving alignment and stakeholder management because there's definitely a group of PMs whose specialty wasn't technical.
It was politics. You're very excited about this move to IC work. PM's moving away from this big org management world.
If you were really successful as a PM, you got promoted into being a director. We took all of our A players and then promoted them out of doing things. Why wouldn't you want Messi playing for your team rather than trying to have the academy coming along all the time?
Today, my guest is Tom Verrilli. Tom is Chief Product Officer at Whatnot, former longtime Chief Product Officer at Twitch, and former Director of Product Growth at Twitter. He's also someone I've been wanting to get on this podcast for so long. Tom has a lot of hot takes and really unique and important insights on the future of the product role, what he's seeing the best PMs doing differently these days, and what he's looking for when he's hiring product people for his team now. If you're not familiar with Whatnot, it's a live stream shopping platform. It's the fastest growing U.S. marketplace business of all time. At one point, Tom shares how he bought a fresh lobster from a fisherman on the platform.
Before we get into it, don't forget to check out Lenny'sproductpass.com for a free year of the hottest and most beautifully crafted AI products in the world, available exclusively to Lenny's newsletter subscribers. With that, I bring you Tom Verrilli. Tom, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast Thank you so much, dude It feels kind of surreal after years of watching I hear that. I hear that when people come on the podcast. Here you are.
Somebody's giving you first time long term?
That's right.
I want to start with something that you wrote online that surprised a lot of people and I think will surprise a lot of people. Coming from a long time chief product officer, a long time product builder, someone that's built a lot of very successful products and teams. What you wrote is, since its earliest inception, the Whatnot product team was built on the somewhat simple premise. We regret that product management exists. Yes, sir.
Not a thing you probably hear from a lot of CPOs.
No. Talk about why you feel this way. Talk about how you got to this place. Talk about what this means. Sure.
I mean, I always try and start with like... history in order to understand kind of things. And one of the things when you come to product management is if you go all the way back, like product management didn't exist, right? It was like the business and, you know, very often founder or CEO types talking directly to engineering and design about what we needed to build and then executing it together.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
Why does Tom say “we regret that product management exists” at Whatnot?
0:00–10:28
2
When does specialization (PMs vs engineers/designers) make sense and when does it harm teams?
10:28–26:03
3
How does Whatnot structure its PM org and allocate PMs to problems?
26:03–47:28
4
What does Tom look for when hiring PMs and which interview traits are trending down?
47:28–1:05:02
5
How is AI changing PM work and what three AI boosts have most improved productivity at Whatnot?
1:05:02–1:19:01
6
Why is there a shift toward senior ICs doing hands‑on product work and what does IC PM work look like?
1:19:01–1:24:55
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