Great pay and benefits that you will pay for with your mental health - Designer Cengage Employee Review

1.0
12 Aug 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Money is Good Benefits are Great Hardware is new and shiny Some people are really nice

Cons

I received no training other than HR onboarding. My boss promised me that she would train me, as in walkthrough individual projects with me and what was expected, but that never happened. Instead, she went on vacation and I was expected to get everything I needed from my partners in another department. I raised my hand for help twice and only received the answer that 'I would get used to it'. What I really needed was a little more time with my supervisor to flesh out what was expected with the deliverables. I was having panic attacks every day because of my established disability and the lack of clarity around what I was doing. I ended up giving notice of leave and their only answer was that 'it was for the best'. I was told that there were people to help me, but my role was new and the only person who had experience was my manager - yeah the one on vacation. They also expected me to be a web developer when I was clear about my experience in my interviews.

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Cengage Response
4y
Thank you for taking the time to share this feedback about your experience - it is good to hear that you were happy with the benefits we provide, and felt welcomed by colleagues. I am saddened to hear that you did not receive adequate training. This would be considered a management failure, and an anomaly. As part of our onboarding process, we expect that managers will fully prepare for their new hires arrival by creating specific and thorough onboarding plans for each person. These onboarding plans should be created outside of the overall Cengage onboarding process and program, and to help in this process we offer a comprehensive onboarding site that provides information to new hires and supports managers in acclimating new team members. Additionally, we have a robust Professional Development philosophy and site with access to workshops and self-paced learning, which provides further learning and development opportunities for employees. I want to acknowledge that this is an area where we are all continuing to learn, especially during the times of COVID where it has been more challenging to onboard remotely. We are all human and facing the unknown together here, and are actively working to continue enhancing our templates and support for managers in role-specific onboarding. Your feedback will help guide that continued work, so thank you for commenting. I wish you all the best in your next endeavor. Michael Hansen, CEO

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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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