In this episode of Leadership Exchange, Tracy Lee welcomes Tom Occhino, Chief Product Officer at Vercel and former leader of the React team at Meta. Tom shares the story of React’s early days, how incremental adoption and escape hatches gave it an edge, and why simplifying concepts was always more important than adding new features. He reflects on building a culture of humility and openness in open source, as well as the strengths-based management approach he still applies at Vercel. The discussion explores how Vercel maintains speed through lightweight programs instead of heavy processes and how the team embraces mistakes as long as they bring new learning. Tom explains how he measures success by customer outcomes rather than vanity metrics and why his role is about empowering people who drive technology forward.

Four key points from this episode:

- React’s success came from incremental adoption and escape hatches that made it easier to use than other frameworks.

- Strengths-based leadership, humility, and giving more credit than you take shaped both the React org and Vercel’s culture.

- Vercel ships fast by using lightweight “tell first, then ship” programs and treating novel incidents as learning opportunities.

- The long-term vision is to keep the open web as the most important platform, with React, Next.js, and Vercel driving its future.

Chapters

0:00 React’s role in keeping the web open

0:40 Host and guest introduction

3:05 How React started at Facebook

5:00 Why React overtook other frameworks

12:00 Balancing features with simplicity

17:02 Transition to Vercel and leadership lessons

22:12 Measuring impact and community adoption

25:21 Guiding people who guide technology

28:31 Leadership principles and team culture

37:03 Vision for the open web in the next decade

38:48 Upcoming Next.js Conf and Ship AI

39:26 Closing and sign-off

Tom Occhino on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomocchino/

Tracy Lee on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracyslee/

This Dot Labs Twitter: https://x.com/ThisDotLabs

This Dot Media Twitter: https://x.com/ThisDotMedia

This Dot Labs Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisdotlabs/

This Dot Labs Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thisdot/

This Dot Labs Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/thisdotlabs.bsky.social

Sponsored by This Dot Labs: https://ai.thisdot.co