Sonos Lays Off 100 Employees, But Not the CEO

Sonos CEO Patrick Spence confirmed that the company laid off 100 employees. I’m curious why he wasn’t one of them, given the disaster he’s orchestrated.

“We made the difficult decision to say goodbye to approximately 100 team members representing 6 percent of the company,” Mr. Spence told TechCrunch. “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.”

“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,” Spence continued. “Today, we are focused on our departing employees and ensuring they have the support they need.”

I assume most are familiar with the spiraling misfortunes at Sonos, which replaced its already terrible mobile app with an even worse new version full of functional regressions that won’t be fixed for several months. And that this nightmare cost the company $20 million to $30 million in revenues because it had to delay long-awaited new products so it can clean up the self-inflected mess first.

Now, there are rumors that Sonos may bring back its previous app so that users can temporarily choose which version to use while it fixes the new one. This is what I recommended from the beginning, and it’s unclear why, three months later, it still hasn’t happened. This company couldn’t fight its way out of a paper bag.

And that’s on Spence. I can’t imagine how he’s kept his job, and I can only assume his golden parachute is so lucrative that his departure would be financially devastating to the suddenly struggling company. But what he’s done is nothing short of corporate malfeasance, an effort purposeful or irresponsible, it doesn’t matter, that undermined the company he’s supposed to lead. And that Sonos may never recover from this.

So, sure. Bring back the old app. But get rid of Spence too.