Celebrating the Future Innovators of Sound

This National Intern Day, we’re celebrating the diverse perspectives, fresh energy, and overall value the Sonos Internship Program brings to the organization. We spoke to Anaïs Sarrazin and Iris Chen, whose internships led to full-time employment with Sonos, about how their first placements at Sonos became the catalyst for their careers.

“I’ve grown up with Sonos my whole life,” said Sarrazin, explaining her initial motivations for applying for the Software Project Manager internship. “There’s always been music around the house, and I’ve always loved Sonos products.” 

But our internships are as much about our company culture as the products we make: not just asking interns to work on groundbreaking innovations for a few months before their placement ends, but building lasting professional relationships and fostering a workplace culture where colleagues of all experience levels feel valued and welcome. 

Applying via the Grace Hopper Conference, which brings together women and non-binary people working in tech, Sarrazin was amazed to find herself chatting with Sonos CEO Patrick Spence for the better part of half an hour. 

“Having a CEO at the booth for a careers fair is pretty much unheard of,” Sarrazin said. “It was really cool to talk to Patrick directly, and get his thoughts on culture change within the tech industry and at Sonos.”

That more human scale was a crucial part of Sarrazin’s career aspirations. “I wanted to work somewhere that I could make an impact, so the allure of a big tech company wasn’t there for me,” she explained. “Sonos felt like the perfect middle ground. It’s established itself as a leader in its field, but it’s small enough that everyone is clearly valued, and everyone does important work.”

Sarazin’s internship, and her subsequent employment as a Software Product Manager II for Platform API and Power Management teams, stayed true to those principles. Rather than being a passive recipient of others’ knowledge, she actively participated in team projects from the start, specifically Sonos’ new goal to efficiently and sustainably manage energy consumption. 

“It was scary at first. I was a young woman, so being in a room with 20 established engineers was intimidating,” she recalled. “But I got over that, and quickly found my place to help address our collective goals.” 

With 18 months of full-time employment under her belt, Sarrazin now plays an integral role within her team, working cross-functionally on several key sustainability initiatives for the Sonos portfolio, as well as organizing an upcoming summit for over 50 team members.

Her experience is mirrored by that of Iris Chen, a 2019 intern who has grown within her role on the Sonos Product Marketing team, leading ongoing software initiatives and new innovations, including Sonos Voice Control. 

“I definitely received more responsibility than anticipated,” Chen said of the research projects she took on as a Product Marketing and Collaboration intern. “It was very intensive, and educational, but also there was a lot of output from my end as well. I still regularly refer back to the research I produced as an intern.”

Just like Sarrazin, Chen drew not only on the expertise of her immediate team, but also from colleagues across Sonos. “I was a bit shocked in my first week, my manager gave me a list of people to speak to, including VPs and senior directors. I was like, ‘Am I worth their time?’ But I just put time on their calendar and every single person that I talked to was so open. No one was guarding their own secrets.”

With employees dispersed across different cities and time zones, most of Chen’s interactions with her team happened via Zoom. But she was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to foster relationships remotely. 

“I’m in Santa Barbara, but my manager was based in Seattle, so the two other team members based here kind of adopted me,” Chen said. “But what’s been great is that everyone works as a team, instead of my work being the direct responsibility of one manager. Sonos’ corporate structure is flat and non-hierarchical, which makes remote work much more collaborative.”

It was the balance between being challenged in their daily work, yet always supported by their teams (and the organization at large) that positively influenced their experience as both interns and employees.  

For Chen, the true value of Sonos’ culture came during the groundbreaking development of Sonos Voice Control, where she found herself collaborating directly with VP of Voice Experience, Joseph Dureau in preparation for its launch. 

“At first I thought, ‘What can I show you?’ He’d been working in this space for years and I’m so new to all this,” she explained. However, Chen quickly overcame her nervousness. “I learned that as long as I have good ideas, and data to back them up, then people will respond to that. Everyone’s coming from a different perspective, whether they’re engineers or marketers, but that all comes together in the same customer journey. We all have important and valid arguments on the table, and it’s up to us to mediate those collectively, rather than someone saying, ‘Oh, you’re just an intern.”