There is better out there for you - Anonymous employee Cengage Employee Review

3.0
May 5, 2023
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The people are some of the best I'd ever worked with. Good flexibility and reasonable people.

Cons

The industry is declining, they expect a lot of work out of you for little pay. They sell it with the "culture" - which is not wrong - but culture doesn't protect you from frequent layoffs and downsizing to control costs while the market and revenues continue to shrink. My advice to anyone looking at this company is to try to find a healthy company first. Cengage is great, but it can't overcome the mechanisms of the shrinking market and that will always be reflected in pay and job security. It's very stressful and it took me getting away to really see how stressful. Career advancement isn't great and in many cases is blocked by budgets year after year.

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Cengage Response
3y
Thank you for reviewing your work experience at Cengage Group. I am pleased to hear that you enjoyed your colleagues and that found your work to be flexible. Regarding layoffs, the education industry is one of constant change, yet our strategy of delivering affordable high-quality materials to students remains the same. We periodically evaluate our approaches, and that sometimes results in difficult decisions about colleagues and teams. That said, these decisions are not taken lightly; we value every employee and the contributions they have made. Thank you for your more than 8 years of service, I wish you the best in your next endeavors. Best, Michael Hansen, CEO

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5.0
Mar 28, 2026
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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.

6
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