Cengage reviews

I was at this company for 10 years. I bought into the culture hype and the ra-ra Cengage crap, I was a very loyal and dedicated employee who often had 3-4 departments under me; more work than was reasonable. However, no one is immune from the unceremonious and continuous cycle of layoffs and reorganization, and I fell victim to a reorg that stuck me with the worst boss of my life, and ended up leaving before I developed a dependency on Xanax to get through working with them. Despite repeated complaints and an entire department walking out, that boss was retained for more than 2 years, while good, experienced people left because of how bad they were. Every reorg is presented with "well the last one didn't work, but this time we figured it out!" only to be told the same thing 6 months later. Each layoff puts more pressure and more work on the remaining staff, while internal systems and structures are antiquated and almost impossible to navigate. The industry is in serious decline and the pressure to be profitable is enormous; it seems their only tool to do that is staffing reductions, even though there are repeated boondoggles and pet projects and acquisitions that receive massive funding but go nowhere. How well you do, in my experience, very much depends on whether you are your boss's favorite rather than whether you do a good job; talent actively identified as "retain" are not, in fact, retained, with dumb reasons made up as to why they can't stay or advance. Lots of decisions they make are real head-scratchers. Bottom line: if you have a choice between Cengage and a different company to work at, choose the other company, as there is ZERO job security at Cengage.

Since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, Cengage has spoken a great deal about employee health, both physical and mental, and offered support via counseling services, time off. However, the executive team last summer announced a period of 12-18 months of refocus and reorganization that would involve difficult layoffs. Since then, the majority of employees have been living with worry, uncertainty and anguish. Layoffs are hitting good employees hard, with another 6-10 months to come of uncertainty and fear as more employees are let go despite the company's financial situation being healthy. We used to be an education company, then an edtech company, and now we do not know what we are. Concerns for quality in our products seem to have taken a backseat to the drive to cut costs and in all likelihood, get the company looking good for a sale in the future. The mental health of employees has been treated so cavalierly with these warnings of significant impending cuts over a long stretch of time. Morale is at an all-time low and the joy of the work we do is decimated. We no longer even know what our jobs are. The executive team will oversee a sale, get their bonuses and walk away to new roles elsewhere. Those of us living on far lower salaries and no bonuses will have to put our pride of working for an education company aside and search for work elsewhere. But we are told it's all in the name of progress, of moving ahead.