Happy to be gone! - Anonymous employee Cengage Employee Review

1.0
Feb 22, 2013
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Worked with and for some great people. Good time off and benefits. Flex time.

Cons

After 2009, things deteriorated quickly. No leadership, inept middle managers were put in charge. They hadn't done a good job managing at the level they had been at, much less to run the company after all of the C-Levels were let go in a day. Inevitable spiral. HR staff ineffective and bitter. Don't ever go to them with a real problem. Certainly not if it's about your manager. Their solution is to immediately run to the manager that is the problem in the first place and tell them.

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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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