Dangling carrots and conflicting performance standards. - Inside Learning Consultant (Sales) Cengage Employee Review

2.0
Jul 19, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good people, many of whom are passionate about education and improving outcomes. Friendly and non-competitive sales environment. Flexible schedules and work-life balance. Improving digital offerings.

Cons

Attaining bonuses is difficult under ideal circumstances. Accurate reporting is a constant problem and the hard work of getting commitments to use products can be undermined by multiple sales channels that may or may not be credited to the rep. The best people in day to day effort and metrics can be threatened with negative performance reviews while still being handed threshold incentive checks. Make sure you find the base pay acceptable and do not assume there is any loyalty or investment in your success from senior management.

Explore other reviews about Cengage

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.

5
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All