Great products but very troubled company because of highly leveraged purchase from Thomson and poor product decisions - Anonymous employee Cengage Employee Review

3.0
Jun 26, 2013
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Best in class products, industry leadership in the library reference space and some niche areas on the textbook side.

Cons

Too much debt and bad management decisions have caused a major upheaval. Constant reorganization starting in 2010 left many good employees jobless while, for the most part, the upper-middle management folks have snaked their way into new positions within the company. Just because you claim to be a "digital" company doesn't make it so.

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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.

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