Replaces talent with cheaper associates
Pros
The people are the saving grace. We all worked very hard and balanced a lot of responsibility, and there was real camaraderie. I was also able to acquire a lot of skills that I leveraged to leave Cengage.
Cons
I was with CL for over a decade and worked in Product Management for the last 5 years, and I can say that the job steadily increased in responsibility with no commensurate increase in pay. Only after someone leaves or is laid off do they offer those who remain any kind of pay increase. It's shameful. There was no work/life balance. PMs are expected to do all of the travel, all of the marketing, and all of the sales support for their disciplines. This is not sustainable. There is no real cooperation or ownership of anything by anyone in any other department except Product Management, and that's not fair. Every single time someone in another department was laid off, our PM group was told, 'you must pick up the slack now.' It happened at least four times in the past year. It is weak middle management to allow work to continuously pile up on your people instead of defending them and the core responsibilities they are supposed to be focusing on, like developing products and doing market research.
