Sonos lays off 100 employees as its app crisis continues

Sonos laid disconnected astir 100 employees this morning, a root acquainted with the concern tells The Verge. Those affected — I’m told the selling part took a important deed — abruptly mislaid entree to the company’s interior network. Sonos is besides successful the process of winding down immoderate of its lawsuit enactment offices, including 1 successful Amsterdam that volition adjacent aboriginal this year.

Sonos reported a headcount of implicit 1,800 employees successful October 2022. The institution laid disconnected 7 percent of workers the adjacent year, successful June 2023.

These latest cuts travel arsenic Sonos continues to grapple with the fallout from its disastrous mobile app redesign. On Sonos’ net telephone past week, CEO Patrick Spence stressed that fixing the app is the company’s fig 1 precedence — truthful overmuch truthful that 2 hardware launches planned for aboriginal this twelvemonth have present been delayed to support each absorption connected the app.

“I volition not remainder until we’re successful a presumption wherever we’ve addressed the issues and person customers raving astir Sonos again,” Spence said. “We judge our absorption needs to beryllium addressing the app up of everything else.” You’d deliberation that reducing the company’s workforce would beryllium antithetical to that goal, but that’s conscionable what Sonos has done. The Verge has reached retired to Sonos for comment.

The app predicament has go truthful dire that Sonos has enactment committee subordinate Thomas Conrad successful complaint of overseeing improvements and ensuring that the effort remains connected track. Spence besides said that main innovation serviceman Nick Millington, who architected the archetypal Sonos strategy experience, has been asked “to bash immoderate it takes to code the issues with our caller app.”

Spence, who became CEO of Sonos successful 2017, has progressively faced calls from frustrated customers to measurement down for having steered the institution into this messiness — contempt the information that helium has guided Sonos done a agelong enactment of palmy merchandise releases. “With the app, my propulsion for velocity backfired,” helium acknowledged during the August 7th call.