Sonos has laid off round 100 workers on Wednesday, first reported by The Verge and confirmed to Engadget. Employees from the corporate’s advertising division allegedly bore the brunt of the hit. The cuts come as Sonos tries to concurrently promote the general public on its new Ace headphones and repair the rebuilt Sonos cell app, which CEO Patrick Spence admitted was the results of his push for growth pace.
The corporate confirmed the layoffs in a press release to Engadget. “We made the difficult decision to say goodbye to approximately 100 team members representing 6 percent of the company,” Spence mentioned in a press release. “This action was a difficult, but necessary, measure to ensure continued, meaningful investment in Sonos’ product roadmap while setting Sonos up for long term success.”
The corporate can also be reportedly “winding down” some buyer help workplaces, together with one in Amsterdam scheduled for shutdown later this yr. Sonos’ LinkedIn web page stories 1,800 workers worldwide, and the six-percent determine quoted within the assertion would put it at about 1,650 staff. The corporate’s final layoffs, in June 2023, slashed seven p.c of its workforce.
Though Engadget’s assessment was largely impressed with the corporate’s new Ace headphones, the app complaints largely overshadowed the extremely anticipated {hardware} launch. Designed to deal with “performance and reliability issues” and rebuild the developer platform with “modern programming languages that will allow us to drive more innovation faster,” the app launch has been a debacle. It’s created complications for the corporate’s most loyal clients and threatened to pull down the model because it pushes into new product classes. It even led to the delay of two new merchandise that had been in any other case able to roll.
The brand new Sonos app for Android, iOS and desktop launched in Could with out core performance like sleep timers and alarms. Clients reported issues rearranging audio system in numerous rooms, some solely working intermittently and issues finishing different fundamental duties. Others even mentioned they usually couldn’t load the app on the primary attempt.
For a style of how damaged the app is, Spence laid out a timeline to restore it in a weblog put up late final month. July and August had been devoted to bettering stability when including new merchandise and implementing Music Library enhancements. An August and September window is reserved for bettering quantity responsiveness, consumer interface, stability and error dealing with. September and October will embody tweaks to alarm consistency and reliability, and the restoration of enhancing playlists and queues. Enhancements to settings will even be addressed. (Phew!)
In Spence’s assertion about Wednesday’s layoffs, he mentioned the cuts received’t have an effect on the work on the app. “Our continued commitment to the app recovery and delighting our customers remains our priority and we are confident that today’s actions will not impact our ability to deliver on that promise,” the CEO wrote.
At present’s announcement wasn’t obtained nicely by the corporate’s Reddit group, which has been vocal concerning the app’s issues since its launch. Some seen in the present day’s reported layoffs as concentrating on 100 staff when one high-profile one would’ve performed the trick. “I have to say that, I didn’t have both feet in the door to fire Patrick Spence, but any CEO who leaves his employees hung out to dry and then signs the paper that lays them off is a scumbag piece of shit,” u/teryan2006 wrote.
“Since I took over as CEO, one of my particular points of emphasis has been the imperative for Sonos to move faster,” Spence mentioned on a July earnings name. “That is what led to my promise to deliver at least two new products every year — a promise we have successfully delivered on. With the app, however, my push for speed backfired.”
Replace, August 14, 2023, 4:56 PM ET: This story has been up to date so as to add the assertion from Sonos CEO Patrick Spence.
