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

Product management functions often suffer from over-specialization, where arbitrary hiring ratios lead to bureaucratic bloat and the infantilization of engineering and design teams. Instead of mapping product managers to every team, organizations should treat the role as a trade built through experience, empowering engineers and designers to make decisions directly. Senior leaders and VPs should remain hands-on as individual contributors to maintain a connection to ground truth and accelerate execution. AI tools now provide immense leverage, enabling smaller, senior-led teams to bypass traditional alignment meetings and data science bottlenecks. Success in this environment requires "playing the accordion"—constantly oscillating between high-level strategic planning and granular, data-driven iteration. Ultimately, the most effective product teams prioritize deep customer understanding and rapid, high-conviction shipping over the performative "product theater" of endless documentation and stakeholder management.