Sonos lays off staff to streamline teams and improve their speed

Sonos has laid off around 3 per cent of its workforce as the audio company looks to remove management layers and speed up product development. The move comes as Sonos continues its turnaround efforts following the fallout from its troubled app redesign.

In Short

• Sonos cuts 3 percent of workforce, including leadership roles
• CEO Tom Conrad says goal is faster decisions and better products
• Layoffs come as the company pushes ahead with its recovery after the 2024 app crisis

Sonos has carried out another round of layoffs, reducing around 3 per cent of its workforce as the premium audio company continues its restructuring efforts. According to Bloomberg, the latest cuts affect employees across the user experience, product and design teams, including leadership roles, as the company looks to simplify its organisation and improve the speed at which products are developed.

The latest move comes only a few months after Sonos eliminated several marketing positions in April as part of changes within that division. The company says the fresh round of job cuts is aimed at making teams leaner and allowing them to work with fewer management layers.

A Sonos spokesperson told Bloomberg the layoffs and said the reductions were intended to help the company move faster. "The reductions, which affect 3 per cent of the company’s workforce, were about removing layers and streamlining our teams so that they can execute with greater autonomy and speed," the spokesperson said.

CEO wants faster decisions and quicker product development

In a memo sent to employees, Sonos CEO Tom Conrad explained that the restructuring is part of its effort to make the company more agile in an increasingly competitive market.

“I want a Sonos that moves with more conviction and more velocity,” Conrad wrote. “Fewer months in conference rooms. More prototypes in our labs. More decisions made and executed. More exceptional products in the world for our customers.”

The layoffs come at a time when Sonos is trying to rebuild customer trust after one of the most difficult periods in its history. In May 2024, the company rolled out a redesigned mobile app that was widely criticised for bugs and missing features. The release led to customer complaints, hurt confidence in the Sonos ecosystem and affected sales. The company even delayed new product launches for more than a year while it worked to improve the software experience.

Earlier this month, Sonos began testing another redesign of its app. Rather than launching a completely new application, the update focuses on improving navigation inside the existing app. It introduces navigation tabs, a refreshed volume control system and several usability improvements.

In a Reddit post, Conrad said, “the team has spent hundreds of hours over the past year watching real customers use the Sonos app, longtime owners and brand new ones alike,” suggesting that customer feedback has played a major role in the redesign.

Despite the workforce reduction, Sonos says its turnaround strategy is beginning to show results. During the company's latest earnings call last month, Conrad said the business had started recovering after the difficult period.

“We have changed the trajectory of the business,” he said. “After a challenging period, Sonos is beginning to grow again, and we are seeing our progress show up across the company.”

The latest layoffs at Sonos also come as job cuts continue across the wider technology industry. Companies are increasingly restructuring their businesses to reduce costs, improve efficiency and invest more heavily in emerging technologies such as AI. Oracle, for example, recently disclosed that it reduced its global workforce by nearly 21,000 employees over the past year, saying the adoption of AI across its operations has contributed to ongoing workforce reductions.

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