korrents

What Tom Verrilli thinks about management

@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.

10 dated positions, 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what Tom Verrilli has said — not written or endorsed by them.

  1. Our readingHiring 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.

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

    designproduct managementhiring

    Interesting

  3. Our readingProduct 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.

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

    product management

    Interesting

  5. Our readingA 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.

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

    product managementpolitics

    Interesting

  7. Our readingThe 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.

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

    Interesting

  9. Our readingPeople 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.

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

    product management

    Interesting

  11. Our readingA 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.

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

    Interesting

  13. Our readingThe 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

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

    Interesting

  15. Our readingTop-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.

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

    Interesting

  17. Our readingWhen 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.

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

    Interesting

  19. Our readingWhen 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.

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

    Interesting