Clown Show - Anonymous employee Cengage Employee Review

1.0
Nov 11, 2015
Anonymous employee
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

Lots of good products, but not in the last year or two. Serious effort by some employees to do the right thing by customers.

Cons

Parent company (called Cengage Learning) is wobbly. Constant changes in strategy make it impossible to follow the leader. Talk is always about revenue and why it is slipping. Nothing else seems to matter, ever. No effort to understand customer needs better, in spite of lip service. Product program has fallen apart. Leadership = non-existent. Atmosphere is tainted by panic and by reaction. Budget cuts (which happen frequently, and without notice) mean cut-backs on product quality. Feels like a company that is only pretending...and hopes to be bought out before the ceiling falls in.

Explore other reviews about Cengage

5.0
Mar 28, 2026
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

Total rewards, time off, great people and culture

Cons

Lots of changes and uncertainty at times

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.

13
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All