How Sonos Botched an App and Infuriated Its Customers
Ignoring “tech debt,” disregarding employee warnings and cutting costs combined to create a crisis that the high-end audio company is still struggling to recover from.
Sonos CEO Patrick Spence is receiving thousands of complaints.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
Earlier this summer, amid a crisis, the chief executive officer of Sonos Inc., Patrick Spence, turned to Eddie Lazarus, the company’s lead counsel, and asked him to undertake what the company has called a “deep dive” and “reflection” into the events leading up to the launch of its new app in May.
A better term might be “postmortem.” The update has become one of the most disastrous software releases by any consumer technology company in recent memory. In any corner of the internet where customers have a space to speak their minds, the anger at Sonos is raucous.