korrents

Tom Verrilli

@tom-verrilli · 24 positions · 0 changes of mind

Chief product officer at the live-shopping marketplace Whatnot, previously chief product officer at Twitch and a product lead on growth at Twitter.

Tom Verrilli did not write this page.

We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.

  1. Our reading

    The only real case for product management as a specialist function is that it is a trade, not a qualification — something you get good at by doing.

    Their wordsThe only argument as far as I'm aware for why you would want product management to be a specialist function is really it's a trade, not a qualification.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:04:40 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)youtube.com 1st of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  3. Our reading

    The engineer-designer-PM pod ratio was an HR artifact of scaling, not something anyone showed a product needed.

    Their wordssomewhere along the line this kind of HR ratio of like a pod popped into being. You know, every time you hire six engineers, you add a designer or you add a PM, you add an EM
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:06:36 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)youtube.com 2nd of 24 in this recording

    design

    Interesting

  5. Our reading

    Hiring product managers by ratio infantilizes engineers and designers who were perfectly capable of deciding for themselves.

    Their wordshiring 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.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:07:10 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)youtube.com 3rd of 24 in this recording

    designhiringmanagement

    Interesting

  7. Our reading

    A company should hire a product manager only against a specific need, never by default.

    Their wordswe articulate it that way to kind of force ourselves to remember that you don't hire a PM just for the sake of hiring one, you hire one with a really specific need.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:09:53 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)youtube.com 4th of 24 in this recording

    hiring

    Interesting

  9. Our reading

    Product managers should be assigned to problems, not attached to engineering teams.

    Their wordsrather than mapping PMs to teams where you kind of assume that the PM will always do that, we tend to map them to kind of problems or kind of like core projects.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:10:36 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)youtube.com 5th of 24 in this recording

    management

    Interesting

  11. Our reading

    AI gives an individual contributor so much leverage that one very senior product manager beats three entry-level ones.

    Their wordsyou can have one very senior PM across more things and they can be more efficient than having, you know, three relatively entry-level PMs.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:14:22 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)youtube.com 6th of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  13. Our reading

    A whole class of product managers built a career on politics rather than on technical or customer skill, and that skill is now worth nothing.

    Their wordsthere's definitely a group of PMs and I certainly used to be one of them earlier in my career whose specialty wasn't technical or customer-oriented, it was politics.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:18:14 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)youtube.com 7th of 24 in this recording

    managementpolitics

    Interesting

  15. Our reading

    The industry's promotion ladder took its best product people and promoted them out of doing the work.

    Their wordswhat you did if you were really successful as a PM is you got promoted into being a director and then all of a sudden it was like don't be hands-on anymore. Your goal goal is just to coach and guide. And so, we took all of our A players and then promoted them out of doing things.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:22:29 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)youtube.com 8th of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  17. Our reading

    People who manage product managers should still spend almost all of their own time doing individual contributor work.

    Their wordsThere's like I think four or five people across the team who manage other PMs. All of them would spend 90 plus percent of their time doing IC work. I'm still probably 50% of my time doing IC work personally.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:23:08 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)youtube.com 9th of 24 in this recording

    management

    Interesting

  19. Our reading

    A product leader writing production code is not the best use of their time, even though they should be able to read the codebase.

    Their wordshave I personally shipped some production code and whatnot? Yes. Uh do I think that's really the best use of my time? Not really.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:26:08 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)youtube.com 10th of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  21. Our reading

    A few senior individual contributors can be paid VP money and still cost less than the layered product org they replace.

    Their wordsgo and take the comp required to have five L5s reporting to one L7 and then four L7s reporting to one VP and now total the comp of that product org and turn around and say, what if I had three people?
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:29:04 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)youtube.com 11th of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  23. Our reading

    AI data tooling has cut the product manager's need for data scientists while multiplying the time they spend in the data themselves.

    Their wordsas a product manager, I've spent less time in the last year talking to a data scientist than I ever have in my career, even though I've probably spent 10 times more time in data and understanding actually how the product's working than I have ever have in my career.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:36:52 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)youtube.com 12th of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  25. Our reading

    Needing fewer people per unit of output does not mean a company ends up employing fewer people.

    Their wordsif you are using these systems right you can just grow more quickly you can build more things you can take on more stuff so you know I would be surprised actually if we ended up with like net fewer
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:43:30 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)youtube.com 13th of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  27. Our reading

    Core product skills are the most durable in an AI world, but many people holding the PM title spent five years building the wrong ones.

    Their wordsabsolutely agree that product skills are probably the most durable. My build would just be there's a lot of people who have the title PM who haven't spent a lot of time building those skills in the last 5 years, but have gotten really good at communicating frameworks to leadership.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:48:00 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)youtube.com 14th of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  29. Our reading

    Interviews reward presentation; only a hands-on case study shows how fast a candidate's thinking decays.

    Their wordsthe number of people who present incredibly well, and then you give them a prompt and some data and ask them to come back with a PRD on something, and then we make them verbally defend it, how quickly the thinking decays from folks who are good at the theater, but not the specifics, uh is kind of really telling, I think.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:49:05 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)youtube.com 15th of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  31. Our reading

    The right posture toward your own team is verify then trust, not trust but verify.

    Their wordswe tend to live in a verify then trust land as opposed to a like totally trust or even trust but verify
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:50:16 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)youtube.com 16th of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  33. Our reading

    You cannot make good macro decisions without the micro, which means a leader has to sit alongside the individual contributors.

    Their wordsif you don't actually push yourself down to sit alongside your IC engineers and your IC designers and your IC PMs, you don't actually know that stuff. So you can't make good macro decisions without the micro.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:52:59 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)youtube.com 17th of 24 in this recording

    design

    Interesting

  35. Our reading

    Top-down product leadership works when the leader is in the weeds; what people call micromanagement is a leader directing work without knowing ground truth.

    Their wordsTop-down works well if leadership is good enough to be in the weeds and be specifically correct. I think where it falls apart is where you don't actually know ground truth and then you attempt to manage people from above and that's where I think the term micromanagement comes from.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:55:55 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)youtube.com 18th of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  37. Our reading

    When nobody in the room has data, the chief executive's opinion should win, and that is fine.

    Their wordsif it nobody's got data, it's just two opinions, the CEO's opinion is going to win.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 1:01:07 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)youtube.com 19th of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  39. Our reading

    Roadmapping and pure iteration are both failure modes; a product team has to keep stretching out to strategy and compressing back into shipping.

    Their wordsthere are people who are really big on road maps and there are people who are really big on iteration. I I think the honest answer is you've got to do both. You can't over-index on either.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 1:03:55 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)youtube.com 20th of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  41. Our reading

    Agentic shopping will not take over commerce, because most shopping is low-intent — e-commerce has never passed twenty percent of American retail.

    Their wordsmost of commerce in America isn't actually high intent. Like how many years are we into e-commerce now? Like 30 years into e-commerce and e-commerce has never exceeded 20% of retail spend in America.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 1:07:35 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)youtube.com 21st of 24 in this recording

    America

    Interesting

  43. Our reading

    Live commerce works at audience sizes that would be uneconomic for live entertainment, because commerce does not run on CPMs.

    Their wordscommerce has totally different economics to entertainment and CPMs aren't the thing that you have to worry about.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 1:09:32 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)youtube.com 22nd of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  45. Our reading

    When a decision is called too complex to make, the real explanation is almost always weak leadership.

    Their wordswhat I definitely learned is like most of the time you hear it's really complex. It isn't. Leadership's just weak.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 1:11:17 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)youtube.com 23rd of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  47. Our reading

    Deciding on averages is how product teams destroy the small group for whom a barely-used feature is everything.

    Their wordsthere are real downstream impacts to people's businesses that often come from just like a lack of nuance in understanding metrics, particularly averages.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 1:15:12 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)youtube.com 24th of 24 in this recording

    Interesting