Sonos will soon encourage employees from its various product teams who live near its US offices to come in at least two days a week. The edge has learned. This is a notable break from the company's history, throughout which Sonos has enthusiastically supported hybrid and fully remote work. Job postings at Sonos routinely state that “it's about impact, not location.” Glassdoor Reviews They have long supported it, and employees did not report being pressured to go to the office.
But that lax stance will change slightly as Sonos continues its effort to right the ship after this year's app mishap and keep up with upcoming products. It is adopting a stricter policy that will require employees of products near Santa Barbara, Boston, Seattle and San Francisco to be regularly present in those offices. The Santa Barbara location is where Sonos is headquartered. The company currently also operates international offices in Paris and the Netherlands.
“Flexibility has been a fundamental principle of how Sonos has operated since our founding. “Flexibility isn’t going away, but like many companies, we are evaluating the impact in-person collaboration has on the effectiveness of our teams and our culture,” Sonos said in a statement provided by spokesperson Olivia Singer.
“Sonos product teams rely heavily on collaboration, collective problem solving, and hands-on testing. These are activities that we believe can be done more effectively in person. We will prioritize office space for our product teams to collaborate in person more than 2 days per week, depending on location (closeness to office), role, and current needs. However, many Sonos employees and teams will see no changes to their current employment status.”
Sonos employees tell me that morale remains low internally (it has been since the controversy over the app became a crisis) and some fear another wave of layoffs in the coming weeks after 100 employees were cut in April.
New job openings from the company have been extremely scarce in recent weeks as Sonos tightens its belt amid sluggish demand. During last month's quarterly earnings call, CEO Patrick Spence and CFO Saori Casey said Sonos will take all necessary steps to keep the balance sheet where it needs to be as the audio company goes through a challenging period for its business. Those measures already include relying more on ai to handle customer service requests.
The new Sonos Arc Ultra has received positive reviews across the board, including from yours truly. But a single product has failed to convince rank-and-file employees (or the company's most ardent customers) that Sonos is back on the right long-term trajectory.
