Sonos CEO Patrick Spence Steps Down

Again no surprise for me. He was doomed after the first week of the new app. Probably agreed a plan with the board to get to the New Year and step down. His apology came way too late, and despite fixes the product is still not where it was before the fateful upgrade. That, as has been pointed out by others, shows a spectacular level of arrogance which I would bet is still evident across the rest of the board. 
 

I will not morn his departure but feel for those sacrificed by his poor decisions, which even someone with a kindergarten level of IT and business sense, would know would cause massive customer dissatisfaction. It’s become a case study on how not to do things, up (or should I say down) there with debacles such as the Atari ET game, Kodak ignoring digital, Nokias demise and British Airways move into LHR terminal 5. 
 

 Now he’s gone I may get an arc Ultra😂

Many months too late in my opinion.

What a legacy - ruined the app therefore ruining the product and the company and alienated a massive percentage of loyal customers.

IMHO, the fish may rot from the head, yet there are still a lot of “so called leaders” in this fish head to be held accountable (not to mention the very board that was supposed to give guidance and oversight to this company).

All the signs were there - arrogance, ignorance, and naked greed sank this ship and wasn’t just the captain who should be held accountable! 

Give the 100 employees their job back. 
it’s them that have suffered for the  CEO and boards hubris and foolishness. 
And they’re the ones who the customers need on board to get their systems back from the burning trash can that they became. 

Aren’t ‘Share led’ stock market companies just disgusting! All of the emphasis on customer care and product maintenance is sacrificed to focus on the ‘next big cash hit’ for investors. 

Faithful employees are cut while the board and CEO save face and customers money to allow for a massive golden handshake. And getting handed shares at a low point in the company’s stock value mean when someone else cleans up his/their mess, he’ll see a nice little bounce in his investment. Obscene! 

I never thought a discussion about sound quality would end with an indictment of capitalism!

Currently searching pawn shops for a 1980s Technics Amp and some Bose 301’s
 

Not surprising. Easy to imagine big projections fell flat. Pushing the headphones a quarter would have been the brave decision!

Too late. What is the timeline for a basic fix for the known bugs? This is amature hour!

Ya I was kind of dumbstruck by Sonos support as well. Like level 1 was a frontline rep who basically didn’t seem to have much Sonos knowledge or experience of their own. It was like they were searching a knowledge base for answers. When I got moved up to a level 2, a support supervisor, I was surprised he wasn’t even aware of well known Sonos issues either (ie Google Assistant doesn’t work with Apple Music). Again it was like he knew a bit more than level 1 but seemed to be just searching a knowledge base to get answers as well. When I got elevated to level 3, I was finally talking to a Sonos engineer directly and it was great. Like he just knew stuff, like you’d expect every support person would know.

Its not like I’m expecting level 1 and 2 to be experts but come on, the support people themselves should be experienced Sonos users and should know some of the main issues without having to search a knowledge base. I mean even if they are searching a knowledge base, you’d think they would become familiar with the main issues if they keep coming up as results all the time.

I don’t blame the reps that much though. This is the company’s decision as to how their support group works. But with the app fiasco, I’m sure they got overloaded with user support requests and had to hire extra outside help who had little to no knowledge of their products. That’s really, really bad in terms of a customer experience though. 

Have you read the information in the app update schedule here, seen the posted release notes here, or even the quarterly comments here?

Spence’s arrogance and condescending public statements made it clear to me that Sonos will never really recover operationally and reputationally as long as he continued as CEO. He profoundly and repeatedly broke the trust of Sonos’ customers, its business partners and its board members. His departure is positive news for all stakeholders.

Interim CEO has got rid of Chief product officer Maxime Bouvat-Merlin, the guy who told us how brave Sonos were being.  The whole position is being removed, which is quite a call.

As was said right at the beginning, there will be case studies about all of this and how Sonos mis-handled it all, including Spence telling us how great the App was and how he'd been using it for months without issue.  It was always only a matter of time before he went.

https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/14/24343873/sonos-product-officer-maxime-bouvat-merlin-leaving