Cengage reviews

3.0

34% would recommend to a friend

(2,398 total reviews)
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Michael Hansen

43% approve of CEO

27% positive business outlook

Cengage has an employee rating of 3.0 out of 5 stars, based on 2,398 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an average working experience there. The Cengage employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Mídia e comunicação industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

2K reviews
2.0
Jan 21, 2024
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

I really enjoyed the First Fridays, for the most part. Decent benefits, ERGs, wellness days, positive work environment. Good products, a desire to save students time and money. I had a great boss. I think Michael Hansen is a good leader, well-liked by the workforce.

Cons

They talk about change, change, change and how it's good. But they really don't change anything that important, It's just rebranding, reorgs, and layoffs. Technology platforms are the real roadblocks and they never seem to change, just creep to more complexity. Tech leadership needs to make things easier, not harder. Slack channel during First Fridays could get out of bounds. Some employees wanting to pick fights about politics and cultural issues. CEO is courteous, and reasonable and wants to give people a voice--but some people abused the open forum. There is a perception that the ET is no longer calling the shots. It seems like private investors are having an oversized influence on how the company is being run these days.

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Cengage Response
2y
Thank you for taking the time to leave a review about your experience. I understand, and even agree with, your frustration regarding roadblocks and complexity, our primary objective with the recent changes is to at enhance efficiency, streamline our processes, and create greater simplicity across the business. Like every company in a competitive market, we sometimes must make difficult decisions that impact our teams. We truly value our employees and their contributions, and these decisions are not easy. I believe that this evolution in the way we work will eliminate many of the complexities and challenges our business faces, and ultimately strengthen our business overall. To your comment on First Fridays, providing a forum for individuals to ask questions and express their views is critical to a healthy culture, as transparency and candor are core tenants of our ethos. That said, we all must approach these conversations with respect and understanding for all viewpoints; that is something as a leader I strive to instill as part of these conversations. Best, Michael Hansen, CEO
2.0
Jun 8, 2019
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

Pay, benefits and people are not bad. Pay is on the low side.

Cons

- So much change (every week) that what you may enjoy or like about the company and culture one day, changes the next - Lots of cooperate bull crap thrown around by the c-level leadership. They say they are transparent but yet the rational behind decisions fails to make any sense. What are the real reasons? - CTO compared Cengage to Amazon. Got news for you bro, Cengage is definitely not on the same level as Amazon nor is any talent from your company good enough to work on top level tech. - Remote work flexibility taken away, for no reason, even though company has many locations and teams are spread out everywhere. Get ready to commute all the way to the office just to sit on video calls all day with your teams. If everyone is going to sit on video calls, why not let them work remote if they want to? - Tech, coding, organization and agile environments are HACKED together at best. Cengage’s products, frontend code and backend code are at a level of quality that at any another tech company would be completely unacceptable. If you’re a dev about to work here, get ready to patch and hack things together to meet deadlines, gain bad development habits and spend hours frustrated over badly coded projects.

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Cengage Response
7y
Thanks for taking the time to share this feedback on your experience with Cengage. I’m sorry to hear that our leadership and environment did not meet your expectations of a world class organization. I’d like to share my perspective on a few of your comments. Change is a constant in Cengage - I look at it as a differentiation in our success versus our competition. We embrace change and the unknown - because it's the only way we can advance an industry that has been slow to change over it's history. We try to communicate clearly and effectively from the leadership team, through our managers, to all employees - but it's always a challenge at the rate of speed we move to impact our student savings goal. We do value co-location for our people. If I could have all Cengage employees sit together in one office, I would! And for two main reasons: First, collaboration between teams matters. I believe that the more we can come together to connect and the more closely we collaborate, the better our products will be. Second, I find our people grow from “unintended collisions”, or those encounters where they might bump into a team or colleague working on a project in our open office environment and learn something that they can apply to their own work. That being said, we do not have a stated policy that says employees must come into the office. It is up to manager discretion to decide what they feel is best for their teams / work. I bring up Amazon quite a bit when talking about our technology organization. Candidly, we have recently seen some of our people leave to pursue opportunities at Amazon, and we are absolutely competing with them (and others in the technology space) for top talent. We have to, otherwise we will not be able to continue to lead positive change through technology in order to deliver the best content possible to the students and educators we serve. Serving these students and educators often means meeting them where they are. We want our customers to move to our newest technologies when it makes the most sense for them. This does mean, we must maintain legacy platforms, systems, and integrations to meet their needs. We will continue to set the bar higher and improve our technology – that’s one of the many reasons I come to work energized every day. I value your feedback and candor as a reminder of the work that I have to do for our people AND our learners. George Moore Chief Technology Officer
1.0
Dec 31, 2016

Open your eyes...the people MATTER

Anonymous employee
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

At one point it was the people, but the current mindset is "a veteran can be replace by someone younger for less money and no family". Additionally there is no value in those who have been with the company and performed well.

Cons

There is no work life balance - vacation is frowned upon and the expectation is to work a full day with customers then spend evenings doing planning and follow up. The culture is one of fear and intimidation - the executive team in both sales and product is filled with bullies...men who yell and cuss at their team, it is known yet still tolerated. This breeds a temperament of just keep your head down and do what you are told to keep your job. There is no value placed on top performance nor on constructive feedback, it is just wanting YES-men/women. No strategy, focus or true direction. - Reorganizations occur every 9-12 months, changing territories and job responsibilities. The sales period is 9-12 months therefore it is in a constant state of turmoil. Reps close deals/experience increases in revenue only to have those accounts taken from them before bonuses are paid.

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