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What Tom Verrilli thinks about product 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.

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

  1. Our readingThe 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.

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

    Interesting

  3. 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

    designhiring

    Interesting

  5. Our readingA 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.

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

    hiring

    Interesting

  7. 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

    Interesting

  9. Our readingAI 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.

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

    Interesting

  11. 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

    politics

    Interesting

  13. 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

    Interesting

  15. Our readingAI 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.

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

    Interesting