Fascinating work, but frustrating because of growing distance between top management and people doing the work. - Publishing Cengage Employee Review

2.0
Sep 21, 2013
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

You are part of the information industry, which is undergoing incredible change. This provides many opportunities to learn new skills.

Cons

The company is having difficulty adapting to the changes that have occurred and are occurring in information publishing. Most top people learned the publishing business in a print world and are continually behind the curve with regard to how end users access and use information. Top managers also talk mostly amongst themselves--communication with the workforce is mostly top-down and suggestions from the people doing the work get lip service at best. Ultimately it is a very frustrating place to work for any length of time.

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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