Sonos has laid off round 100 workers on Wednesday, in keeping with The Verge. Staff 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 cellular app, which CEO Patrick Spence admitted was the results of his push for growth pace.
The corporate confirmed the layoffs to The Verge. “We made the tough choice to say goodbye to roughly 100 workforce members representing 6 % of the corporate,” Spence mentioned in a press release. The corporate can also be reportedly “winding down” some buyer help places of work, together with one in Amsterdam scheduled for shutdown later this yr. Sonos’ LinkedIn web page reviews 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 % 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 deal with “efficiency and reliability points” and rebuild the developer platform with “fashionable programming languages that may permit us to drive extra innovation quicker,” the app launch has been a debacle. It’s created complications for the corporate’s most loyal prospects and threatened to tug 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 Might 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 primary 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 submit 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 embrace tweaks to alarm consistency and reliability, and the restoration of enhancing playlists and queues. Enhancements to settings can even be addressed. (Phew!)
In the present day’s announcement wasn’t acquired properly by the corporate’s Reddit neighborhood, which has been vocal concerning the app’s issues since its launch. Some seen at this time’s reported layoffs as concentrating on 100 staff when one high-profile one would’ve accomplished the trick. “I’ve to say that, I didn’t have each toes within the door to fireplace Patrick Spence, however any CEO who leaves his workers frolicked to dry after which indicators the paper that lays them off is a scumbag piece of shit,” u/teryan2006 wrote.
“Since I took over as CEO, one in all my specific factors of emphasis has been the crucial for Sonos to maneuver quicker,” Spence mentioned on a July earnings name. “That’s what led to my promise to ship at the very least two new merchandise yearly — a promise we’ve efficiently delivered on. With the app, nonetheless, my push for pace backfired.”
