People leave leadership, not the company - Marketing Cengage Employee Review

1.0
Nov 19, 2013
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I'm hard pressed to think of the positives. The products are well designed and serve a noble purpose and important markets. And, there's time to peruse the job boards.

Cons

Leadership is inbred and unqualified. They couldn't find shoes in a shoe box let alone a strategy to save them from bankruptcy. I've never had so many opportunities to say, "this is like a scene out of Office Space." They keep promoting people to their next level of incompetency (men to VPs and the women to middle management). Don't expect to see people of color until after 5 when the cleaning crew starts.

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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
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