Replaces talent with cheaper associates - Product Manager Cengage Employee Review

3.0
Nov 15, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The people are the saving grace. We all worked very hard and balanced a lot of responsibility, and there was real camaraderie. I was also able to acquire a lot of skills that I leveraged to leave Cengage.

Cons

I was with CL for over a decade and worked in Product Management for the last 5 years, and I can say that the job steadily increased in responsibility with no commensurate increase in pay. Only after someone leaves or is laid off do they offer those who remain any kind of pay increase. It's shameful. There was no work/life balance. PMs are expected to do all of the travel, all of the marketing, and all of the sales support for their disciplines. This is not sustainable. There is no real cooperation or ownership of anything by anyone in any other department except Product Management, and that's not fair. Every single time someone in another department was laid off, our PM group was told, 'you must pick up the slack now.' It happened at least four times in the past year. It is weak middle management to allow work to continuously pile up on your people instead of defending them and the core responsibilities they are supposed to be focusing on, like developing products and doing market research.

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3.0
Jun 4, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Company has some interesting approaches to the market and in the past they seemed value employees. There are some good employees there and there was, in the past, visionary leadership, but the people with the vision and leadership skills left the company a few years ago.

Cons

The company actively de-values employees. They had a project they called "Project Horizon" where they told all employees they needed to cut costs, so the company was going to have multiple layoffs over 3-5 years - but nobody was allowed to know when, where, or why - - just one day large swaths of people would be gone. That hung over everyone's heads - for years, and is indicative of how Cengage values employees - it doesn't. Everything is about trying to secure new funding and prepare for an IPO, so they stopped investing significantly in the products about 3 years ago and that's about when they stopped acting like they cared about employee wellness as well.

10
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