Photo Credit: Oleg Bilyk
The Sonos app situation is a clusterf*ck for long-time users—now a former engineer gives a peek behind the veil of what’s happened to one of the best audio-focused companies in the last few years.
Posting on the Sonos subreddit, the thread was locked before mods could verify the poster’s credentials. But mods confirmed the poster at least worked for Sonos previously based on evidence provided. This engineer says after experiencing the same problems people were complaining about with ‘No Products Found’ message in the new app—he decided to share his experience.
“Last night, my wonderful speakers completely failed me when I needed them most. It was a broken app situation and I was totally bummed. The error included a start with ‘no products found,’ then my Move 2 not being detected even though it was on the dock. It refused to be used until I went through an update, which of course failed. I had to factory reset it.”
“As a prior employee of Sonos, I believe that incompetence has infected top management at the company. Incompetence in management, incompetence in software. This app roll-out, the road map provided—is a joke. Alarm functionality as a highlight feature? I can write bash scripts that handle alarm systems reliably on an Internet of Things (IoT) network—no problem. Queue logic systems are the most basic sh*t I’ve ever seen.”
Speaking about his past with the company, the engineer says he worked for several years at Sonos. “We were a proud bunch, then the Roam came. Executive management and high leadership rushed that thing out the door. Engineer’s warnings were sidelined in favor of the release date, and to make deadlines for mass production. Shame. That button is universally hated. Embarassing for the brand. This is what I believe was the beginning of the company’s poor management downfall (which I hope is only temporary).”
“One thing you must understand is that in the past, Sonos was more than happy to kill a project if it did not meet expectations for the brand. The previous headset was killed deep into the engineering phase. Good. The tech just wasn’t there yet. During my time there, I was told by veteran OGs that the company’s core values were in the process of eroding thanks to greed, short-sightedness, and poor management from the top.”
“I was starting to see it during my time there, especially when Patrick Spence starting introducing the word ‘layoffs’ in his gentle Canadian voice. Then the layoffs came. Again and again. It was relentless. Then they restructured the company, drove all my ex-colleagues into states of overwork and fear of being laid off. The restructuring caused teams to be silo’d by Maxime’s vision of how to organize people.”
“I wasn’t even discouraged about being laid off. They treated us well, everybody was supportive, I appreciated the break and depression. I was sad to see [reddit] descend into darkness after the app release—understandably so. I still am hopeful that the brand will recover. But the app has started to fail to do what at its core it should do—play music.”
When someone else asked what it’s like to work at the company that is working to reverse a terrible app update, someone else chimed in.
“Things are moving quick. Definitely an ‘all hands on deck’ vibe particularly with the teams that are closest to the Sonos app and Sonos Ace. We have a lot of other things happening this year (new products) so it definitely depends on what team you are on and where you sit,” the commenter continues.
“I don’t want to speak for others so personally—but in customer experience—it’s a bit hectic. We see the long wait times. The seemingly endless queues of calls from understandably upset customers. Folks can get burnt out easily doing this kinda stuff day in and day out, so the lucky ones are trying to take some self-care time off. We are seeing the number of contacts decrease over time as these updates go out. We are making progress. It may not look like it at surface value on reddit or the Sonos Community, but the data we have shows otherwise.”
“We still have work to do, don’t get it twisted. But we are definitely on the path to parity and can see the light at the end of the tunnel.”
