Sonos CEO steps down after smart speaker app upgrade hit bum note Smart speaker outfit Sonos has parted ways with CEO Patrick Spence, who oversaw the release of an app that was billed as an upgrade but instead made the company’s products worse and riled customers. Sonos teased the software in an April 2024 announcement headlined “Sonos Unveils Completely Reimagined Sonos App, Bringing …
at the outset of product development""
Note the use of the future tense in this sentence.
In the 3rd decade of the 21st century yet another company discovers the "Second system" effect described in FE Brooks book in 1975
And (Oh gosh) it appears no one was responsible for monitoring the quality of the software in the upgrade.
Or of checking if it delivered on spec they'd worked out (that's the "Validation" in "Verification and Validation" BTW)
Note this is not startup. They already got a product which it seems people liked (note that past tense).
I've got one of these. I found it in a heap of rubbish and couldn't work out what it was or did. Got some interesting parts. Keypad, USB port, microphone, speaker. Waterproof casing. Rechargeable battery as no power block?
“improve the Sonos core experience for our customers, while optimizing our business to drive innovation and financial performance.”
Sonos already have a bad record of bricking 'end of life' devices or disallowing re-registration for ones which have been sold on to other people, creating the completely avoidable problem of creating landfill in the pursuit of profits. Not sure how that can possibly improve any of their customers experience, nor how that is in any way innovative, but hey, it's forcing people to buy more of their shit so that's a win.
For me, any company which issues a press release that links any presumed benefits for their customers with a reference to potential future profits is to be avoided.
They sound like Microsoft.....
Except Microsoft has a large opt-in beta programme. Developer previews of Windows have been in the hands of users for months. They don't just suddenly release a new OS overnight and expect the whole world to upgrade to it simultaneously.
It's not just that nobody is responsible for monitoring the quality of the replacement software, it's that anyone who talks about errors or gaps in the new product is shouted down, sidelined as not being committed, or flat out fired. All you can do sometimes is sit back with popcorn and wait for it to fail.
I remember working with one of the "brightest and best" once (or so my employer thought when they recruited him based on the university he went to).
His technical documentation was written at the level of a five or six year old writing "what I did on my holidays" at school.....
In a previous employer we had a policy of only interviewing candidates with at least an MSc.
I asked them at the first stage of interview to write about their journey to the interview. I gave then a pencil and paper and left them in the room for 5 minutes.
It certainly weeded out a few who had no idea how to write a coherent narrative.
One of them complained when in a later one-to-one session with my manglement and I was hauled before HR for demeaning the interviewees. Pointing out that I was checking their writing ability and logical thought was not enough to spare me the reprimand :-(
The HR droids would have probably failed my simple test as well!
I've used simple tests like that as well and it is very illuminating and as long as everyone is tested and scored fairly there shouldn't be a problem.
Often in jobs it's more important to see someone's thinking so I've used questions in interviews which are very difficult to answer or don't have a single or clear answer. I want to see the reasoning and logic in an attempted answer even if it might be wrong.
I asked them at the first stage of interview to write about their journey to the interview. I gave then a pencil and paper and left them in the room for 5 minutes.
Any bonus marks for starting the narrative in medias res?
You would be lucky to receive a cogent paragraph giving the instructions for boiling an egg (or in some cases water) from most of the population.
I thought of something similar namely a reading comprehension task drawn from a relevant technical domain followed by the production of a written précis of the material. (Writing effective targetted summaries is hard and mostly a lost art.)
There are a good many people with whom I have worked that I would not risk leaving unsupervised with a sharp pencil.
"You would be lucky to receive a cogent paragraph giving the instructions for boiling an egg"
I'm old so I know how to boil an egg. Those just entering the work slog these days buy pre-boiled eggs (at a fat mark-up).
I bake my own bread and plenty of people I know think that baking bread is magic. It's freakin' flour, salt, water and yeast (with lots of variations). Mix, knead, let rise, mix again, let rise again, put in pan, bake. Don't eat the whole loaf in one go no matter how good it tastes. Lazy method: mix all ingredients until thoroughly combined, leave overnight, quick mix again, put in pan and bake when risen again. The bonus is a house that smells really good. As an exercise for the student, read the label on store bought bread, write a short sentence about what each ingredient is (closed book exam).
"Pointing out that I was checking their writing ability and logical thought was not enough to spare me the reprimand"
You should have invented some name for the test, pointed out that it was accepted good practice and expressed surprise that as HR professionals they didn't recognise it.
They make a handsome profit on the initial sale, but a loss on backend compute resources needed to keep the product "smart". They could charge a realistic fee for the cloudy stuff instead of pretending it's free, or just open source it and let the geeks come up with a way. Shelly do this with their switches and stuff, and it is a joy to work with.
"Spence will be paid $7,500 a month until June 30th, and will offer strategic advisory services to ensure a smooth handover until that date. He’ll walk away with a $1,875,000 severance payment too, and keep his stock options."
Yeah, that'll stick it to him and make sure he never makes a mistake like that again! Whilst sunning himself on his yacht off the coast of Tahiti no doubt.
Here's some free strategic advice for the pillocks that "run" Sonos: ignore everything Spence says - he's a proven idiot.
Oh he's done this several times before, like at Blackberry.
But once you get to C level you only fail up unless you do something *spectacularly* bad for publicity (and this does not reach that level), because it's not what you know (CEOs know jack shit), it's who you know.
A new web app/phone app is released. The reason for the release could be some internal reason (backend cost reduction, or "engagement") or just new shiny. The actual features are of no importance. Unusually, the company actually suffered this time, normally it makes no difference (hello Atlassian!).
"A new web app/phone app is released. The reason for the release could be some internal reason (backend cost reduction, or "engagement") or just new shiny. The actual features are of no importance. Unusually, the company actually suffered this time, normally it makes no difference (hello Atlassian!)."
A lot of what apps are can be boiled down to a shiny bobble that attracts people to load it and supply it with personal information which is the goal of the company, not providing a service in exchange for money.
There's a corollary in other products/services which often get marketed as a thing that eliminates the inconvenience of doing <insert thing here> so you can spend more time <doing other thing>. I'm usually quite introspective so it's amazing that I never spotted how inconvenient that thing was for years and years.
The only reason they brought out this spanking brand new fancy new app (I beg your pardon, that should read half-baked featureless UX-deprived mess) was so that they could sell their Sonos headphones, which did virtually nothing that any other brand of headphones did except cost more. Oh yes, it could connect to your Arc so you could listen to your TV through them. Wow!
Meanwhile Spence and his cronies buckled down and told customers that the new app was the way forward, despite the fact is was buggy, removed half the key functionality, moved the rest of it into the cloud, and had a UX designed to make you scream. Meanwhile, we are told by Sonos fanboys that Sonos didn't remove functionality because you can't remove functionality from an app that has been built from the ground up. Let's build a straw man argument and knock it down to tell you this is not the app you think you are seeking...
As a smug techie, I blocked all updates to my Sonos speakers and app, so I am still using the versions introduced before this debacle and which function perfectly well thank you. Not planning on buying any more Sonos kit as they have lost all my confidence in them to deliver a decent product.
Having used Sonos products at various point over the years, I'm amazed they had any customers left to complain about the new app. The old app was utter shite, and so if Sonos somehow found a way to make it worse, that's an impressive feat indeed!
Of course, my experience with "smart" audio products (i.e. those requiring an app) is that they all suck in one way or another. Every manufacturer wants to lock consumers into their particular product, so they find ways to cripple interoperability, leading to a terrible experience.
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