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.