Sonos Executives Pay The Price For Company’s Shitty, Anti-Consumer Policies
from the de-enshittification? dept
You might remember that Sonos was the golden child of “smart,” internet-connected home hardware a decade or so ago. But that reputation has been steadily tarnished by a long line of bone-headed decisions, ranging from their 2020-era choice to brick still useful speakers and hardware, to their choice last year to release an app update that made their speakers more buggy and way less useful. That rushed and buggy app alone cost the company an estimated $20-30 million in value.
A company with the scale and ad dominance of Meta/Facebook can be a dysfunctional asshole for a long while before the check finally comes due. Less so for specialized hardware vendors like Sonos, whose product quality and consumer-friendliness was the entire reason for their success.
Sonos executives are starting to truly feel the heat of a miserable few years. Sonos CEO Patrick Spence has been forced to step down, followed by the announced departure of Sonos Chief Product Officer Maxime Bouvat-Merlin. Both took a long time to truly own their poor choices, initially going so far as to try and claim their sloppy updates and more hostile treatment of workers were a form of bravery.
New interim Sonos CEO Tom Conrad is trying to strike all the right notes in a letter to employees, letting them know the company heard their concerns about Sonos’ steady drift toward enshittification:
“I’ve heard from many of you about your own frustrations about how far we’ve drifted from our shared ideals. There’s a tremendous amount of work in front of us, including what I’m sure will be some very challenging moments, decisions, and trade-offs, but I’m energized by the passion I see all around me for doing right by our customers and getting back to the innovation that is at the heart of Sonos’ incredible history.”
That’s of course bean counter speak for looming layoffs and greater hostility to remote work. But you’d also hope that somewhere in there is a genuine realization that the company had drifted too far afield from the sort of quality, values, and product innovation that brought the company success in the first place.
Filed Under: audio, consumers, enshittification, hardware, innovation, quality, smart home, smart speakers
Companies: sonos
Comments on “Sonos Executives Pay The Price For Company’s Shitty, Anti-Consumer Policies”
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Meh.
You guys see that President Trump promulgated an EO banning the federal gov’t’s participation in the mutilation and/or sterilization of vulnerable children and young people?
Excerpt:
The Wins just keep coming!!
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thanks for letting the whole world know that you’re really, really gullible
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It’s all right, they’ll keep being trans, so you get to assault and murder the young children when they grow up, if you can wait that long. Wins, indeed.
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I see you want a ruler who controls you, and knows how stupid you are, that you would think this EO actually does anything.
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Why can’t you stop thinking about children’s genitals?
It’s fuckin creepy bro.
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I didn’t see any EOs about decreasing microplastics in the food supply or stopping police brutality.
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Or (somehow) lowering the price of everyday items, like groceries.
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COVID just fucking broke the last bit of your brain, didn’t it?
Or maybe Sonos is paying the price, to the executives
Based on this quote, the headline may not be quite true:
That sounds to me like Max was laid off. For an executive, it may be a bit of a stretch to say they’re “paying a price”.
For example, a search for “termination clause” brought up the “BLACKBERRY LIMITED Management Information Circular for the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders Wednesday, June 20, 2018”, which on page 44 notes that the CEO would’ve received $86,216,696 “If the termination clauses under the respective employment contracts of the NEOs had been triggered on the last day of Fiscal 2018″—including due to a “change of control”, in which case the various other officers would’ve received $5,888,460 to $9,605,909 each.
Well, that’s effectively a failed company, so I don’t know how representative the actual numbers are; but “golden parachute” is a common term, the Wikipedia page for which says “despite years of public outcry against such deals, multimillion-dollar severance packages are still common”, and they continue to become “more complex and opaque”.
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I accidentally pressed “enter” before adding:
“Change of control” is exacty what happened at Sonos, so even the CEO (who ostensibly resigned) might be getting a payout. It’s a public company, so someone better than I at searching might be able to find a relevant public document.
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Here’s a 2022 meeting announcement for Sonos, in which Sonos states:
So, let’s all cry for Patrick Spence, who won’t be getting any severance pay or benefits. Other than $43,056,471 in stock options, but really, 43 million dollars isn’t exactly a lot of money these days.
(They don’t define “change in control”, but it seems that such clauses can often be triggered by any one of: merger, acquisition, significant sale of assets, change in board of directors, change of majority shareholder. I’m not sure whether such a thing has occurred, but there’s still time: the payment would be triggered on such a “Qualifying Termination” “Within Two Months Prior to, or Within Six Months Following, a Change of Control” or “Within Seven to Twelve Months Following a Change of Control”—but apparently not between six and seven months‽)
I remember hearing about Sonos when they were a wee little IPO. I looked at the numbers and decided to sleep on it. After a nap and brushing up on my Portugese I decided not to invest, I do not regret it.
I have a long term plan to divest myself of services, and I’m pretty buried in the Google ecosystem. There’s a lot of Open Source self hosted options…but replacing Google home for an easy multi room speaker system was leading me to look at Sonos. But fuck that.
Re: Alternative
Highly recommend Bluesound. Better sounding audiophile level gear, support for higher resolution files, and an app that is polished, and regularly updates for free because of no monthly fees, even their oldest machines get updates.
Re: Re: Bluesound
Interesting – thanks for the tip.
Stealing other peoples’ work and claiming it as their own IP is my biggest complaint with Sonos.
Avoiding Paying the Price
Just like politicians quickly quitting before they can be held accountable by parliament and calling it `taking their responsibility’, these CEOs quickly quit before they can be held accountable by their shareholder meetings.
I think of them all as cowards.
Come on Google!
Maybe Alphabet/Google can now just buy up Sonos and end Sonos’ IP troll behavior.
Never again
I’m a long-time multiroom Sonos user; bought my first Connect in, I think, 2012, and fairly soon had Sonos gear all over my apartment. I replaced them all last fall with WiiM streamers and a few new powered speakers — it would have been sooner, but I was waiting for the Thanksgiving sales — and am now happily Sonos-free. The WiiMs are cheaper, sound better to my untrained ears, and the difference in software support is night and day.