Sonos laying off 100 people amid expensive app problems
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Funny how layoffs never seem to affect the management that made the monumental fuckups to begin with.
100% guaran-fucking-teed that many who were laid off knew the new app was shit, said so, and were ignored.
100% guaran-fucking-teed that many who were laid off knew the new app was shit, said so, and were ignored.
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Does that include every manager and executive that signed off on it?
I'm sure the blame and penalty hasn't been completely passed onto the working class employees.
I'm sure the blame and penalty hasn't been completely passed onto the working class employees.
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General rule for all companies: When something succeeds, management wins. When something fails, the working class loses.
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Multiple somebodies at the top of the company signed off on pushing these changes. They won't be fired, of course, but they signed off on it.
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I bet almost every engineer knew this "new app architecture" was garbage too.
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Makes sense. The best way to rapidly fix a problem is to fire all the people that could help.
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Ah the classic rewrite trap that any seasoned engineer will tell you to stay away from.
You should never rewrite the existing app. You replace parts of it at a time with testing to ensure you're not mucking things up
You should never rewrite the existing app. You replace parts of it at a time with testing to ensure you're not mucking things up
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Discounts are almost always a trap. It's basically an attempt to entrench a customer even more, making the sunk cost fallacy hit harder the next time Sonos screws them over.
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There’s got to be balance here, lest you end up with Delta Airlines technology stack.
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This reminds me of where I work as a "manager" but I'm really a web dev.
We had a license on our cms which was coming due for something like a million dollars because of bot activity thanks to my old, short sighted manager. I worked like a dog for 4 months to get everything migrated over and working with a new system and when it was all done on time my reports joked that they hoped some of the saved money would be coming to us. I told them no, this just meant that no one got fired because that would have definitely happened to get the budget more level.
So yeah, it's usually the people least responsible that have to suffer the consequences. I doubt it's ever been different than that and it sucks which is why I worked so hard.
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I'm picturing it literally: hundreds of pedestal servers in a big, unwieldy jenga pile.
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Sounds like they're not using the new app for much, because it's incapable, but FTA people used the old app for
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Playing music? Controlling music when I'm not at my computer? What do you use for that?
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Playing music from my phone. Playing music from my music server.
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Yeap, that's why you rewrite different slices with test harness.
With some of these apps, I doubt they have more tests than some QA testers
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I just use the native apps I guess. I've never had a need to open the Sonos app after setting up the system
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OkSureFine
Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
I love how taking "full responsibility" for a shit show you approved plays out by laying off 100 employees while you keep your job.
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Haven’t you heard? QA is a cost center. So you fire them all, and make the devs responsible for testing their own code with test harnesses that will have 100% coverage. Easy-peazy.
What could go wrong?
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I would be very interested to hear from someone on the inside exactly what happened here. Was the new app contracted out to the lowest bidder? Was it a matter of Sonos not wanting to pay the wages demanded by more capable developers? Is it a case of the cart pulling the horse, with designers and product managers having disproportionally more say in the product than the engineers? Perhaps marketing wanted the ability to inject their own changes without interacting with engineering which made for an unsustainable architecture? Some combo of all the above?
Lots of things that could've gone wrong here.
While this isn't a bad rule of thumb, rewrites can be pulled off with exceptionally capable teams and leadership that understand the value of everything the original was capable of and know to factor all of that into designs, requirements, and estimates for the replacement. Where things go awry is when the replacement isn't intended to be comprehensive or is based on a shallow grasp of the original. Extensive testing with real-world users helps a lot here too.
That's expensive though, and so is almost never what happens. It's way cheaper and easier to have the designers spin up a good looking mockup and build off of that.
Lots of things that could've gone wrong here.
While this isn't a bad rule of thumb, rewrites can be pulled off with exceptionally capable teams and leadership that understand the value of everything the original was capable of and know to factor all of that into designs, requirements, and estimates for the replacement. Where things go awry is when the replacement isn't intended to be comprehensive or is based on a shallow grasp of the original. Extensive testing with real-world users helps a lot here too.
That's expensive though, and so is almost never what happens. It's way cheaper and easier to have the designers spin up a good looking mockup and build off of that.
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LOL, gee some really sensitive people downvoted you...too sensitive to be on the internet I would say. But yeah he should be the first to go at this point. He has been in charge during all the many issues with Sonos and people laid off. Besides it flat out not working the new UI is terrible too and I didn't really have complaints about the last UI when so many others did.
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Sonos laid off all their US developers long ago and replaced them with cheap 3rd party contractors from 3rd world countires.
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Yeah, I was surprised at that as well. Not sure if it was the potty mouth, brevity, or Sonos Fandom, which has always struck me as a bit much. {shrug emoji}
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Well that explains a lot. You might be able to get by doing that when software isn't at the heart of your business and/or your software is very simple, but with as many things as the Sonos app does (easily multiple standalone apps' worth of functionality) and how it's the center of their ecosystem, things are bound to go wrong.
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Like many others on this forum, it sounds like you and I both have experience in software development. It's been nearly two decades since I've seen any software company staff a formal QA department. Not having a QA department is quite normal in my experience. And while I agree there are risks to having devs test their own code, particularly during the initial phases of the no-QA transition, I have also seen many years of successful operations using the no-QA model.
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Oh, no, they'll get huge raises. Look how much money they saved with all these layoffs!
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That has been my theory.
People seem to love it though, but it's one step too far into vendor lock in that I want nothing to do with.
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I'm guessing it simply didn't land. Not everybody knows about the whole fuck spez thing. That context is necessary for it to work.
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I don't even know if this was a QA failure.
The app is missing past features... QA not likely to test something that was a "doesn't have that" decision.
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I expect my hardware to continue working even if the company deems the product to be too old. I decide when I am ready to upgrade. Bricking devices and taking away features with forced updates will not be tolerated.
We will own nothing and be happy for it. I will purchase nothing in return.
Provide value for money, inspire me to purchase something new because it is better, not because you ruined what I already bought.
We will own nothing and be happy for it. I will purchase nothing in return.
Provide value for money, inspire me to purchase something new because it is better, not because you ruined what I already bought.
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The message Sonos are sending is take care of investors before customers. I was a believer in their ecosystem and recommended it to at least 10+ people because it was damn reliable with acceptable sound quality. Not any more… spent 2hrs using a mix of old android phones and PCs to help a friend fix a broken system due to the new app. Now they want to reduce staff?
Executive decisions to help investor’s perception instead of customer perception will not fix the long-term problems.
Executive decisions to help investor’s perception instead of customer perception will not fix the long-term problems.
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Generally true, but there are occasions where an app replacement could be necessary. Still, you better test the shit out of it to ensure functionality, and at least try to update the back end separately from the front end. (Sounds like Sonos did neither.)
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