Solid Company, lots of Change, Tough Market - Marketing Cengage Employee Review

3.0
Aug 26, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I worked at Cengage 5+ years in a variety of marketing roles in the Higher Ed Division. I think your experience would vary greatly depending on which business unit you are apart of, as we had little collaboration with other departments like Nat Geo Learning, InfoSec or Milady. As a larger Company Group, the CEO is really great. The communication, First Fridays and updates are really appreciated and helped you to feel connected to the larger goals of the company. We always appreciated hearing from different parts of the business and it helped us get an insight into overall company strategy. The benefits are really good. This includes the generous 401K match, PTO, parental leave, holidays and more. Overall the benefits are extremely competitive. As for the Higher Ed Division, the people were really great. Most people at almost all levels are willing to jump into help and always put the customer first. There's a really strong customer first mindset that helps guide most decisions. The team meetings and sales meetings were always fun, informative and a great way to collaborate with colleagues. The remote work policy is great, and the offices that are available are very nice.

Cons

Change is constant. Thats something that lots of reviews say but its genuinely true. I think during my time I had to have gone through at least four reorgs, one potential merger and several serious layoffs. When I first started, the Marketing Team for Higher Ed was huge and over the years its shrunk down to an incredibly small size, yet still expected to deliver the same results. If you aren't change adverse this shouldn't be a problem but definitely something to keep in mind. The pay is way below market value. Most offers I got to leave were considerably above what I was making. Especially compared to tech companies, the pay can be seriously lacking. You have to advocate hard for yourself when it comes to pay raises, but management is occasionally open to it. The product isn't the greatest. The overall purchasing models are innovative and definitely a positive, but the products themselves are lacking. Software looks like its from 10 years ago, outages were common, and systems were set up in a way that made access more complicated then it needed to be for customers. Rather then build something new from the ground up, new products were frequently components of others products repackaged and resold. Leadership changes hurt overall strategy and moral. Especially for the Higher Education division, the latest change to combine with other BU's/regions really hurt team moral, productivity and produced tons of confusion. You can almost pinpoint issues popping up as soon as one GM left and two others took over. Sentiment was very common among employees that we lacked clear direction. Internal systems were lacking. Didn't use the latest Martech or CRM (at the time) and made you feel like you were behind compared to colleagues who worked at other companies. Upward mobility was very challenging. Rarely did we see IC's get promoted to management but rather just another level of IC. Management hires usually came from competitors and always seemed to have some connection to leadership.

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Cengage Response
2y
Thank you for sharing detailed feedback about your experience working here. Regarding changes and reorganizations, we will continue to look for ways to simplify our work and meet our customers’ evolving needs – it’s key to our success in a rapidly changing industry. As an organization we have worked hard to ensure our total rewards are competitive with the market and that staff are fairly compensated for the work they are responsible for. Our HR teams closely monitor the market to ensure our compensation is competitive. That said, we are a grateful for your service and know that Cengage Group is not the right fit for everyone, and I wish you a successful future. Best, Edwin Robles, SVP and GM of US Higher Ed & Canada

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5.0
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Pros

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Cons

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1.0
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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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