They want innovation but are afraid to take the risks - Content Developer Cengage Employee Review

2.0
Jan 24, 2013
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

-Desire for innovation - Honest efforts to move into digital environment -Belmont office has great views -Willing to hear new ideas -Gave me an opportunity to develop relationships with some interesting people with very good ideas

Cons

-Many of the best and brightest are gone (to be expected) and have been (in most cases, not all) replaced with lesser minds (troubling) -Not the best pay -Flexibility in work/life has gone down considerably (when I started we could work from home 2 days a week but then it went down to 1 in Q3 2012 and I believe now it is completely gone for most teams) -Management is slow to accept change, they talk a big game regarding desire for innovation but are very gun-shy on any real initiates (somewhat understandable after the MindTap disaster) -Rapid acquisitions in mid-2000s was handled poorly and created a disparate and often political corporate environment in which the old guard of print and the new school tech evangelists were often at odds (seems like print people often won these battles because of their experience in these sorts of altercations, after all, they've been fighting the battle to resist change for a long time so as to keep their own skin intact.)

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

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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