How Sonos botched its app and infuriated its customers
Sonos’ app update update has become one of the most disastrous software releases by any consumer technology company in recent memory. In most every corner of the internet where customers have a space to speak their minds, the anger at Sonos is palpable.
Dave Lee for Bloomberg News:
What has happened to Sonos is at its heart a cautionary tale of company leadership ignoring the perils of “technical debt,” the term used by software engineers to describe the compounding threat of outdated code and infrastructure on security, usability and stability.
For two decades, Sonos had allowed its tech debt to pile high. When it undertook in earnest its effort to revamp its app in mid-2022, the company knew it was sitting on infrastructure and code written in languages that were pretty much obsolete. The Sonos app had been adapted and spliced and tinkered with so often, the vast majority of work being performed for the new app was less about introducing new functionality than sorting out the existing mess.
The company could have tackled its tech debt sooner but appears to have lacked a crucial element: urgency.
MacDailyNews Take: In a properly functioning company, with a properly functioning board of directors, CEO Patrick Spence would’ve been out on his ass long ago (re: floating to earth under his golden parachute). Instead, he’s still there “leading Sonos” with all of his “decision-making capabilities” primed to detonate yet again.
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