Dysfunctional and Mismanaged - Assistant Editor Cengage Employee Review

1.0
Mar 12, 2013
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

Many of the people who work at Cengage are wonderful.

Cons

There is a glaring lack of communication between departments, which creates a pervasive culture of confusion. The company is constantly reorganizing, seemingly without any regard for the employees affected by the reorgs. Upper management is secretive and often maintains a tone of blatant disrespect for the entry-level employees. Mid-management is in shambles because of the reorgs and there is a constant struggle between the new managers (who are not discipline-aligned) and old manangers (who are discipline-aligned). Again, this creates confusion for the entry-level employees, some of whom have as many as 4 "managers" telling them different things do and different ways to handle things. There are frequent promotions for mid/upper level managers (who then do not receive proper training to manage employees), but there is literally zero room for entry-level employees to move up. I say "literally" because they have simply stopped replacing people leave the company. Perhaps the most infuriating aspect of the job is that management seems oblivious to the fact that a significant portion of their employees are recent college grads. Rather than use us a resource, we have to sit in meetings where managers refer to college students as "lazy" and "think they are always right," simply because students refuse to shell out $300 for a textbook that they can get second-hand for much less. This is a terrible place to work. The pay is pretty much impossible to live on (WELL below market) and because they aren't filling entry-level positions, most of us are filling what should be multiple jobs with no extra pay. The enviornment is toxic, the good employees are all jumping ship (wisely) and the company refuses to adapt new strategies that would actually lower the cost of textbooks.

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5.0
Mar 28, 2026
Recommend
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Pros

Total rewards, time off, great people and culture

Cons

Lots of changes and uncertainty at times

3.0
Jun 4, 2026
Recommend
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Pros

Company has some interesting approaches to the market and in the past they seemed value employees. There are some good employees there and there was, in the past, visionary leadership, but the people with the vision and leadership skills left the company a few years ago.

Cons

The company actively de-values employees. They had a project they called "Project Horizon" where they told all employees they needed to cut costs, so the company was going to have multiple layoffs over 3-5 years - but nobody was allowed to know when, where, or why - - just one day large swaths of people would be gone. That hung over everyone's heads - for years, and is indicative of how Cengage values employees - it doesn't. Everything is about trying to secure new funding and prepare for an IPO, so they stopped investing significantly in the products about 3 years ago and that's about when they stopped acting like they cared about employee wellness as well.

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