Sonos, still trying to fix its broken app, lays off 100 employees

Sonos has laid off round 100 employees on Wednesday, in accordance to The Verge. Staff from the corporate’s advertising and marketing 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 fix the rebuilt Sonos cell app, which CEO Patrick Spence admitted was the results of his push for improvement velocity.

The corporate confirmed the layoffs to The Verge. “We made the difficult decision to say goodbye to approximately 100 team members representing 6 percent of the company,” Spence stated in a press release. The corporate can be reportedly “winding down” some buyer help workplaces, together with one in Amsterdam scheduled for shutdown later this yr. Sonos’ LinkedIn web page studies 1,800 employees 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 evaluation was largely impressed with the corporate’s new Ace headphones, the app complaints largely overshadowed the extremely anticipated {hardware} launch. Designed to handle “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 prospects and threatened to drag 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 prepared to roll.

The brand new Sonos app for Android, iOS and desktop launched in Could with out core performance like sleep timers and alarms. Prospects reported issues rearranging audio system in numerous rooms, some solely working intermittently and issues finishing different primary duties. Others even stated they usually couldn’t load the app on the primary attempt.

For a style of how broken the app is, Spence laid out a timeline to restore it in a weblog publish late final month. July and August had been devoted to enhancing stability when including new merchandise and implementing Music Library enhancements. An August and September window is reserved for enhancing quantity responsiveness, person 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 can even be addressed. (Phew!)

Immediately’s announcement wasn’t obtained properly by the corporate’s Reddit neighborhood, which has been vocal concerning the app’s issues since its launch. Some considered at present’s reported layoffs as concentrating on 100 staff when one high-profile one would’ve completed 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 stated 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.”