Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)

1h 25min

Tom Verrilli, CPO of Whatnot, challenges the conventional wisdom around product management, arguing that many PMs are unnecessary and can even hinder a team by taking decision-making responsibilities away from engineers and designers. He advocates for a model with fewer, more senior PMs who are deeply hands-on (IC), and emphasizes the growing value of core product skills over political alignment. The episode covers the impact of AI on product teams, the importance of 'systems thinking,' and the benefits of top-down leadership that is deeply involved in the details of the product.

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✨ Key Takeaways

1

Tom Verrilli, CPO of Whatnot, argues that the proliferation of product managers can infantalize engineers and designers who are perfectly capable of making good decisions if given the right context.
2

Whatnot's product team is built on the premise that 'product management exists' is a regret, not a given. They hire PMs only for specific, high-need problems and prioritize a culture of empowering non-PMs to take on PM work.
3

Tom sees a powerful trend of PMs moving back to IC work (individual contributor) rather than management. He believes top players should be hands-on, building and shipping, not just coaching and attending alignment meetings.
4

AI is a massive lever for PMs—Tom uses it to directly query databases, understand codebases, and run data analysis, dramatically reducing reliance on data scientists and engineering time for scoping.
5

Hiring fewer, more senior PMs, often rotated across projects, has been key for Whatnot. Tom looks for candidates who can demonstrate deep systems thinking (macro and micro) and a disdain for political alignment as a specialty.

💬 Notable Quotes

"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."

— Tom Verrilli
"In the last two years, 31,832 people applied to be a product manager at whatnot. We hired one."

— Tom Verrilli
"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?"

— Tom Verrilli