Change may not be a good thing - Anonymous employee Cengage Employee Review

2.0
13 Feb 2018
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

This isn't a bad place to work - You'll work with good people and technology. Work-life balance is good - You aren't pushed too hard. But don't expect a long or rewarding career (see below).

Cons

Market: The market for textbooks has been declining for a while, but really took a dive in 2017. Over 50% of the company's revenue is still tied to products that include print [Yes, they'll tell you more than 50% is digital - it depends on how you classify all the products that include both. And revenue (as opposed to units) is larger for print]. The market for courseware is growing in terms of units sold (replacing hardcopy textboks), but is extremely price sensitive and is not about to replace the decline in printed textbooks. With low cost and often better open texts and courses gaining traction (see Rice's OpenSax - $10/course), another shoe is yet to drop. All of the erstwhile textbook publishers are going to have to cut costs a lot more than they already have to make ends meet (and produce profits for their owners). Change: Leadership likes to call the company Changegage. Each year/semester brings change to the organization. Products and initiatives that were important get deferred. Teams get laid off when their products/releases get to market. Politics: There is significant politics within management ranks. Engineering will get thrown under the bus if they miss a release date. Product teams get the run around. You won't see cross-functional teams that really work together, rather each org checks on the other. Engineering management is super-conservative and resists change. Scrum teams can't make change happen without long approvals. Career: One of the things you notice when you work on the tech teams is that virtually no one has been here longer than 2 years (look on LinkedIn). After a couple years without bonuses and meaningful raises people see through the same-old management-speak and leave (if they aren't laid off yet). Don;t count on your 401K matching - it won't have time to vest :-(.

Explore other reviews about Cengage

3.0
4 Jun 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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