Sonos is letting go of 200 employees as part of a plan to streamline its product teams, according to Bloomberg. The move comes after the company faced challenges, including a failed app redesign last May that alienated many long-time customers.
The app redesign was met with widespread criticism due to its buggy interface and missing features. In response, Sonos paused its hardware product development and redirected all resources toward fixing the app. It took months to restore functionality that had been removed, and the impact on the business was significant—Sonos reported a 16% revenue decline in the fourth fiscal quarter of 2024.
In July, then-CEO Patrick Spence issued a public apology, laying out a plan to improve the app. However, earlier this year, Spence stepped down. He was replaced by interim CEO Tom Conrad, who previously founded the music service Pandora and has been a long-standing member of the Sonos board.
In a message to employees, Conrad acknowledged that the company had become “mired in too many layers” that made collaboration and decision-making unnecessarily complex. He described the need for restructuring to create a more efficient organization. Moving forward, Sonos will consolidate its teams into simpler groups focused on hardware, software, design, quality, and operations, rather than maintaining separate groups for individual product categories.
This restructuring marks a significant shift for the company as it works to rebuild trust with its customers and regain momentum in the market.
