A great company to work for, except for the pay - Anonymous employee Cengage Employee Review

4.0
Feb 17, 2016
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Our CEO, Michael Hansen is outstanding. He has a clear vision on where we need to be going as a company and is a great communicator. I am very proud working at this company and have seen it transform over the years from truly a print based business to an ed tech company. We are changing the lives of people in a great way and we can be proud of what we are accomplishing on a daily basis. Most people I work with are very intelligent. Our office in San Francisco is new, fresh and beautiful. It is an extremely collaborative and open environment.

Cons

The pay in the San Francisco office is not competitive with the tech industry in the Silicon Valley (though upper management says it is), and frankly you can't live on the salary unless you live with a partner/family/roomate, etc. Many of us stay because we love what we do, however when you have to live paycheck to paycheck, it becomes very stressful. If we are a technology first company, then we need to pay technology rates, even if your specific role is not "tech" related. The yearly raises are extremely minimal. Promotions are very hard to come by as well. Also, I understand the the whole "doing more with less" mantra. It is common all over the US and it does make sense to streamline. However, there is only so many people you can cut back in a department and still uphold the same level of work and service. It makes for a lot of disgruntled people, doing the job of 2-3 people and getting paid below rate for it. You have to pay for parking.

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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.

3
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