Would Not Recommend to Anyone I Like - Anonymous employee Cengage Employee Review

2.0
Jul 20, 2018
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Cengage has good products and does a great job building tools to help facilitate higher education learning. This is all done at a great cost to the employees...please refer to cons.

Cons

Cengage has little to no concern for work / personal life balance. Employees are sucked dry/overworked and work in fear. The people culture is the worst I have seen and I have worked for many companies in management roles. It is a toxic environment with the 'E Suite' being ruthless and this behavior trickles down. There are many good people but sadly, they either leave or are forced out and are in no position to change the culture. Additionally, they grossly underpay especially for the amount of work they demand.

Explore other reviews about Cengage

5.0
Mar 28, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Total rewards, time off, great people and culture

Cons

Lots of changes and uncertainty at times

1.0
Jul 13, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The individuals below the management level are good people, with some good people at management but C-Suite is horrible.

Cons

C-Suite hides their plans under corporate speak. Cengage was a family owned private company and they sold and ever since then has had, debt, schemes to shuffle and restructure debt while implementing RIFs after RIFs after RIFs...never ending and amazingly has been in increased this last year. From their actions it's outsource as much as you can of company operations and squeeze value from Intellectual Property. Look how many times they've renamed themselves. They had a CTO join for about a month or two until she realized it was a role with no team, no authority and left. The CEO is amazing at spin, you hear "great, great, great" corporate speak as the reality on the ground is "this failed, that failed..what!? they're gone!...what they moved that department offshore!...what!? that department is now a vendor relationship...oh we're not DEI focused because the wind changed". The trend is contraction not expansion, no ground breaking innovation. My jaded view from college on expensive books has only grew since I see how the sausage is made.

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