Great products but very troubled company because of highly leveraged purchase from Thomson and poor product decisions - Anonymous employee Cengage Employee Review

3.0
Jun 26, 2013
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Best in class products, industry leadership in the library reference space and some niche areas on the textbook side.

Cons

Too much debt and bad management decisions have caused a major upheaval. Constant reorganization starting in 2010 left many good employees jobless while, for the most part, the upper-middle management folks have snaked their way into new positions within the company. Just because you claim to be a "digital" company doesn't make it so.

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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.

3
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