Like watching the Titanic sink - Sales Representative Cengage Employee Review

2.0
24 Feb 2013
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Hard working reps, good benefits, work/life balance

Cons

Lack of direction, inferior technology products, lack of vision, ego-driven new upper management, This company is a mitigated disaster, and with constant reorgs, they can never get anything to take hold. Turning it into Pearson Lite (because, let's face it, that's what they've just done) won't help anything. Taking the chainsaw to 200 reps and manager in one day (many of them successful and experienced) will come back and bite them. Monster-sized territories will not help defeat the competition. Many people who were let go during the Cengage Chainsaw Massacre of 2013 feel like they are the lucky ones. I can't say I disagree.

Explore other reviews about Cengage

5.0
28 Mar 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
4 June 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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