Increasingly profit driven with some great people and ideals - Senior Software Developer Cengage Employee Review

4.0
Oct 31, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Cengage has values that are excellent and a history of putting them into practice, including respect and doing what's right for employees and customers. Team dynamics are very positive and the product is also worthwhile. I was well motivated by both to do my best work.

Cons

Cengage has recently (summer of 2023) committed to an aggressive cost-cutting campaign in order to improve its profit margin from excellent to amazing. This focus on profit margin has begun to undermine the company's social values.

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Cengage Response
2y
Thank you for leaving a review. The goal of recent changes within our business is to improve efficiency by implementing simpler, more standardized, and efficient methods to serve our customers. This transformation is necessary to sustain and accelerate growth in an increasingly competitive and rapidly evolving education and workforce market. Although we have had to make difficult decisions, we truly value our employees and their contributions. I believe that this evolution in the way we work will eliminate many of the complexities and challenges our business faces, and ultimately strengthen our business overall. Best, Michael Hansen, CEO

Explore other reviews about Cengage

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.

6
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