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

Sonos has laid off around 100 employees on Wednesday, first reported by The Verge and confirmed to Engadget. Workers from the company’s marketing department allegedly bore the brunt of the hit. The cuts come as Sonos tries to simultaneously sell the public on its new Ace headphones and fix the rebuilt Sonos mobile app, which CEO Patrick Spence admitted was the result of his push for development speed.

The company confirmed the layoffs in a statement to Engadget. “We made the difficult decision to say goodbye to approximately 100 team members representing 6 percent of the company,” Spence said in a statement. “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 company is also reportedly “winding down” some customer support offices, including one in Amsterdam scheduled for shutdown later this year. Sonos’ LinkedIn page reports 1,800 employees worldwide, and the six-percent figure quoted in the statement would put it at about 1,650 workers. The company’s last layoffs, in June 2023, slashed seven percent of its workforce.

Although Engadget’s review was largely impressed with the company’s new Ace headphones, the app complaints largely overshadowed the highly anticipated hardware launch. Designed to address “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 headaches for the company’s most loyal customers and threatened to drag down the brand as it pushes into new product categories. It even led to the delay of two new products that were otherwise ready to roll.

The new Sonos app for Android, iOS and desktop launched in May without core functionality like sleep timers and alarms. Customers reported problems rearranging speakers in different rooms, some only working intermittently and problems completing other basic tasks. Others even said they often couldn’t load the app on the first try.

For a taste of how broken the app is, Spence laid out a timeline to repair it in a blog post late last month. July and August were dedicated to improving stability when adding new products and implementing Music Library improvements. An August and September window is reserved for improving volume responsiveness, user interface, stability and error handling. September and October will include tweaks to alarm consistency and reliability, and the restoration of editing playlists and queues. Improvements to settings will also be addressed. (Phew!)

In Spence’s statement about Wednesday’s layoffs, he said the cuts won’t affect 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.

Today’s announcement wasn’t received well by the company’s Reddit community, which has been vocal about the app’s problems since its launch. Some viewed today’s reported layoffs as targeting 100 workers when one high-profile one would’ve done 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 said on a July earnings call. “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.”

Update, August 14, 2023, 4:56 PM ET: This story has been updated to add the statement from Sonos CEO Patrick Spence.