Squeezed by management consultants until it breaks - User Experience Designer Cengage Employee Review

2.0
May 9, 2025
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

My business unit had good work life balance, enjoyable coworkers and a salary well matched with the amount of work I was asked to do.

Cons

The last several years, beginning with a $500m investment from Apollo Capital, have been layoff after layoff. I've seen a role offshored to a vendor that churned through 3 contractors in 9 months. I've seen the institutional knowledge of entire functional groups destroyed without regard to it's value. I've seen people, including myself, laid off by executives who never bothered to ask what we did or why it was important.

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.

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