Term Tom Verrilli attributes to Marty Cagan: PM work that looks impressive — alignment decks, storytelling, frameworks — without producing real value. It's the performative failure mode of product management as a discipline.
Whatnot's countermeasure is structural rather than cultural exhortation: every PM candidate must complete a mandatory hands-on case study as part of hiring, screening directly for demonstrated work over demonstrated presentation. This is consistent with treating PM skill as Product Management as a Trade, Not a Qualification — a trade tests doing, not talking.
Related but distinct failure modes: Transformation Theater (theater around org transformations specifically), Hackathons as Innovation Theater, Cosplaying the Product Model.
Whatnot's Hands-On Case Study Hiring exists largely to detect this pattern directly: candidates who interview well on storytelling and frameworks but whose reasoning decays fast once pushed on a hands-on prompt. Verrilli: "How quickly the thinking decays from folks who are good at the theater, but not the specifics, is kind of really telling." The push is for anyone in a product-adjacent role to keep doing IC work themselves rather than drifting into theater — "there's not a lot of place to hide in that anymore," especially as AI removes cover for surface-level work.
Из тем: The Product Operating Model