Failing Executive Leadership Rolling the Dice on H1B Visa Workers - Anonymous employee Cengage Employee Review

1.0
Mar 10, 2017
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Was a good company to work for prior to Micheal Hansen's leadership and George Moore's outsourced technology vision. Company perviously enjoy a respectable reputation.

Cons

Leadership betting on H1B visa employees to cut costs and save company, CTO has impulsive habit of wasteful spending on technologies that do not generate revenue or significant cost savings. Lack of appreciation for the American worker. Sales/marketing focused on offering over-priced products to its customers. Lack of publisher awards and understanding of its customers' needs. Company operates under poor business ethics. Cengage filed bankruptcy and burnt its creditors and small business vendors while the company somehow managed to purchased new prime real estate office locations. Also, the company recently sent out an email to its employees asking workers to have an "open dialogue" against President Trump's immigration policy. Meanwhile, the company has downsized the head count of its American workers while outsourcing to "H1B visa based company" Cognizant. Company does not care to invest in developing and enriching its culture and employee base. Light years away from receiving "Top 500 Best Places To Work". This is supposedly a company with product base focused on education. Cengage provides very little investment of education and further advancement for its employees.

Explore other reviews about Cengage

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.

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