Cengage reviews

Constant cutbacks - employees are nickeled and dimed, but execs still travel too frequently to "strategic" offsite meetings (aka time wasting boondoggles) Senior leadership talks a good game and its carefully orchestrated PR campaign may lead some people to believe that they actually care about employees. Not the case.. There's a disconnect between what is portrayed in interviews with the reality of what daily life at Cengage is. The rosy picture depicted in interviews never was a reality -- my peers and my manager were too busy to train and guide me and then wondered why I wasn't a "good fit". High turnover has left many open positions (though they seem to be adding VPs every week) -- employees have too much work to be done and not enough time to realistically do a decent job. Pay is low - in comparison to similar jobs -- but the demands are relentless.

The culture at Cengage (at least in the Higher Education division) can be very political and when things go wrong there is often a lot of finger pointing. Some of the General Managers and/or Product Managers are not afraid to throw other people (or entire teams) under the bus to make themselves look better or to grab more power and control. And there are too many people calling the shots on the Product teams who have little actual knowledge and experience in developing good quality digital products, which results in more crummy digital products that only aggravate the customers. Hopefully the addition of some newly created technical positions will help to change that, as the company is still too much in the old textbook publishing mindset even though upper management repeatedly says Cengage Learning is a "technology" company. There is also an element coming down from the Executive team about "total accountability" of the Product Managers/Owners for the success of their products that, in my opinion, only works to create a sense of fear amongst the employees because too many are panicked they are going to lose their jobs if a mistake is made or a product isn't delivered on time or underperforms. There is even one member of the executive team who seems to revel in this sort of fear-based bully tactics management style. While such an approach may get some results in the short term I don't think it can be healthy for the corporate culture over the long-term. Coupled with a recent crackdown on flexible and work-from-home hours, the culture is becoming increasingly less worker-friendly. Additionally, groups or divisions within Cengage that have, or try to, create their own culture are stifled and told to get in line with the "Cengage culture." There were also no bonuses for a couple of years before the bankruptcy filing in 2013 and the company's new bonus plan pays less and applies to far fewer employees. NOTE: My scores for "Culture & Values" and "Work/Life Balance" would have been higher had I written this three years ago.