Terrible Middle Management and Technology within their products - Anonymous employee Cengage Employee Review

2.0
Mar 16, 2018
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The only pro - Work-life balance in the Raleigh office

Cons

Middle Management has little experience in managing and doesn't respect their employees wishes and future. I worked there for 10 months, saw multiple products and their code bases are aging / dying without a foreseeable good resolution in the near future. Look at LinkedIn and see the number of folks that stay for short periods of time and then leave, that says it all without words. My two week notice was not respected as without conversation or knowledge 4 days in, I was told the day of that that was my last day and I wouldn't be paid for the remainder of my notice. They claim to be a React and Java shop, two products I saw use React and the rest are a mixture of 10 years worth of JS.

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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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