Tom Verrilli, CPO of Whatnot, challenges conventional PM wisdom. Discover why fewer, senior PMs outperform bloated teams—and what great product work really l...
Why a CPO Regrets Product Management Exists
Key Insights
- The PM proliferation problem: Tech companies hire PMs reflexively (one PM per six engineers), infantilizing engineers and designers who are capable of making decisions independently
- Regret as a forcing function: Whatnot built its product team on the premise that product management shouldn't exist unless there's a specific need—treating it as a specialized trade, not a default role
- Selective hiring: In two years, 31,832 people applied to be a PM at Whatnot. They hired one. The gap reveals a crisis: many who call themselves PMs excel at "product theater" (alignment meetings, documentation, politics) rather than actual product work
- The return to IC work: Even senior PMs and directors should spend significant time as individual contributors—actually shipping, analyzing data, and staying connected to ground truth rather than purely managing
- AI as a multiplier: Tools like Claude and data analytics platforms enable individual contributors to move faster and make better decisions without traditional PM layers
The Real Problem With Modern Product Management
Product management wasn't always a specialized role. When tech companies were smaller, founders and business leaders talked directly to engineers and designers about what to build. As organizations scaled, the responsibility got delegated to a new specialist class. But somewhere along the way, hiring became reflexive rather than intentional.
The "pod structure" emerged: for every six engineers, you'd add a designer, a PM, and an engineering manager. When serving billions of users, this math creates many product managers—and according to Tom Verrilli, CPO of Whatnot, that's where the dysfunction begins. Too many PMs can actually prevent engineers and designers from developing the decision-making muscles they already have.
The muscle atrophies when someone else always does the thinking.
What Whatnot Does Differently: The "Regret" Framework
Whatnot's product team operates on a counterintuitive principle: they regret that product management exists. This isn't cynicism—it's a deliberate forcing function to ensure PMs are hired only when there's genuine need.
The team uses three organizational groups (buyer, seller, trust & risk) with roughly 21-22 PMs. More importantly, they assign PMs to problems and critical projects, not to permanent team slots. This means an engineering team might operate for months or even a year without a dedicated PM—and function better for it.
The hiring bar reflects this philosophy. Whatnot looks for PMs who:
- Actually build things: Not just facilitate meetings or manage stakeholders
- Think in systems: They zoom out to understand macro implications, then zoom back in to execute
- Connect deeply with users and the codebase: They move beyond frameworks and politics into genuine customer empathy and technical literacy
- Make decisive calls under ambiguity: They've moved past the era of endless alignment meetings
Individual Contributor (IC) Work: The Forgotten Leverage
A major shift Verrilli has championed: even senior PMs—directors, VPs, and CPOs—should spend significant time actually doing product work, not just managing.
For Verrilli, IC work means:
- Reading support tickets and understanding real customer problems
- Analyzing data directly (not delegating to data scientists)
- Querying the codebase to understand how systems work
- Writing specs and coordinating with engineering
- Sometimes even shipping code or running standups
At Whatnot, many managers spend over 90% of their time in IC work; Verrilli himself dedicates roughly 50%. The result: better decisions made faster, fewer layers of review, and no misaligned direction filtering down from abstract leadership.
This works because experienced product leaders have honed instincts. They can spot problems quickly and move without endless debate. It's particularly valuable in high-growth environments where a 5% optimization isn't enough—you need fundamental shifts that compound over time.
AI as a Force Multiplier for PMs
Recent AI tools have fundamentally changed what's possible for individual contributors. Verrilli highlights several shifts:
Data analysis at light speed: Tools like Hex Threads (and similar products) let PMs pull insights in minutes that once took weeks. You can build sensitivity models, understand user cohorts, and spot regressions far faster than before.
Codebase comprehension without engineers: Instead of asking engineers "how does the codebase work?"—which diverts their focus—PMs can now query an AI to understand system architecture, dependencies, and logic. No excuse to be ignorant of how your product actually works.
Real-time customer feedback loops: When watching a customer use a product live, you can simultaneously analyze the codebase to determine if an issue is a bug or a comprehension gap. This "feedback loop on steroids" compresses learning cycles dramatically.
The net effect: senior ICs can handle more work, make better-informed decisions, and move faster—creating a compelling case for fewer, more expensive senior PMs instead of junior teams.
The "Accordion" Mental Model: Zoom Out, Zoom In
Verrilli uses the "accordion" metaphor to describe the rhythm of great product work. Stretch it out to breathe (thinking deeply about what you're trying to achieve), then press it back in (ship a minimal version and learn).
This constant motion—zooming out to re-evaluate based on new data, then zooming back in to execute—is what separates thoughtful product work from either endless planning or mindless iteration. You form a hypothesis, run the smallest experiment to test it, learn, and adjust.
Many teams fail because they either:
- Over-plan: Writing two-year roadmaps that can't adapt to learning
- Over-iterate: Shipping changes without understanding broader implications
The accordion keeps you honest.
Lessons From Twitter and Twitch
Verrilli's time at Twitter (2015-2016) amid constant churn—nine heads of product in two years—taught him two critical lessons:
True product-market fit is real: Twitter had it. Despite internal chaos, users loved the product emotionally. This lesson—that metrics don't capture everything—has stuck with him.
Complexity is often weak leadership: When people say something is "really complicated," it usually isn't. The 140-character limit eventually expanded, but discussions about it dragged on for years. No one died. The soul didn't fall apart. Sometimes, hard decisions just need to be made.
The Myth of "Hire Great People and Get Out of Their Way"
Verrilli pushes back on this platitude. The real answer requires nuance: you must work alongside your team, especially on important decisions. The CPO or senior leader's job isn't to abdicate accountability; it's to be deep in the details enough to make good calls.
This doesn't mean micromanagement. It means:
- Sitting with teams to understand exactly how systems work
- Being able to defend a decision because you've done the work
- Giving feedback grounded in real understanding, not abstract principles
Verrilli's founder at Whatnot, Grant, exemplifies this: when he disagrees with a decision in review, he'll clear his day to sit with the team, pull up data, review code line-by-line, and understand ground truth before deciding. Culturally, this sends a powerful signal: we're seeking truth, not just getting approvals.
Hiring for the Future: Fewer PMs, Better Skills
The competitive hiring gap is stark: 31,832 applicants, one hire over two years. The difference between successful and unsuccessful candidates often comes down to whether they've built genuine product muscles or just mastered the theater.
In interviews, Whatnot candidates who "present incredibly well" often crumble when asked to defend a data-driven POV or work through a case study. The thinking decays fast for people strong on frameworks but weak on specifics.
Going forward, Verrilli believes the industry will trend toward:
- Fewer, more senior PMs: Because they can handle more scope and move faster
- IC-focused compensation structures: If a senior PM is doing impactful IC work, they should be paid accordingly—potentially at director/VP salary without the management title
- Hybrid roles like "engineering manager light": Small-team leaders who build rapidly without layers
The Live Commerce Angle
Whatnot is a live-stream shopping platform, and Verrilli's philosophy plays out in interesting ways. Unlike agentic commerce (where AI agents handle purchases for high-intent, programmatic needs), live commerce taps into low-intent discovery and human connection—the value of wandering a mall, seeing what's available, and being sold by a charismatic person.
This isn't competing with AI agents; it's solving a different need. Retail is a $7.5 trillion industry, and most of it remains low-intent, social, and in-person. Live commerce on the internet replicates that at scale.
Conclusion
Tom Verrilli's central argument challenges Silicon Valley orthodoxy: product management as it's currently practiced—bloated, political, abstract—is often a drag on organizations, not an asset. The fix isn't to eliminate PMs; it's to hire them strategically, keep them close to actual work, and empower other functions to do product thinking.
With AI amplifying what individual contributors can accomplish, the case for fewer, more senior, hands-on PMs is stronger than ever. The future of great product work looks less like management theater and more like deep technical and customer understanding, translated into shipped reality.
If you're a PM seeking a role or considering a shift back to IC work, Verrilli's advice is simple: focus on building genuine product muscles—customer empathy, systems thinking, decisiveness—not frameworks and meeting skills. The best teams will notice.
Original source: This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)
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