No soft skills in soft side marketing - Marketing Cengage Employee Review

3.0
Jul 29, 2015
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

Visionary executive leadership team/CEO and amazing people who passionately believe in the mission of the company and education/technology. Truly wonderful products that enhance the lives of customers. Outreach programs that successfully research exactly what will have the greatest positive impact for the end-user (this is the only company that cares enough to do this valuable work).

Cons

Inefficient management and communication practices, senior/middle level manages up (so top executive leadership doesn't get the real/whole picture), no 360 degree feedback program review process, continuous revolving door and loss of top quality talent even when talent is promoted, bad execution and untimeliness of poorly planned initiatives (the ideas are good, just not planned through to the end before being rolled out), unnecessary micromanagement/bureaucratic management practices/procedures/policies, unprofessional conduct by middle level supervisors (directors) towards direct reports.

Explore other reviews about Cengage

3.0
Jun 4, 2026
Recommend
Business Outlook

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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