Don't do it unless you absolutely have to - Account Executive Cengage Employee Review

2.0
19 Oct 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Excellent culture at a direct management and team level. Decision makers, VP and up are incompetent. Company car and gas (up to 4 year old Rav 4, no frills). Amex.

Cons

Long days (expect 50+ hours, home office one day/week), high expectations, brutal lay offs, business strategy changes with the wind. Account executive bonus is annual, so be prepared to live off of 70k for 11 months out of the year and is discretionary- not to be paid out if laid off and may reduce your unemployment benefits. Below industry norms and they won't mention it until 5 interviews and the offer has been extended. The in person door knocking sales style is obsolete for any other professional career path. They burn through account reps and treat them as disposable.

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Cengage Response
2y
At Cengage Group, we know the significant impact our employees have in powering our business, especially our sales teams. We value the work our teams do each day, and regularly monitor industry standards around wages to ensure we are providing fair and competitive compensation and benefit offerings. I’m sorry to hear that your experience with senior leadership did not live up to your expectations. We pride ourselves on transparency and candor, and as part of this, senior leaders and the executive team often discuss the rapid change that is taking place in education, and the ways in which we as a business must evolve to meet this need. This can sometimes mean making difficult decisions in restructuring teams that remove some roles, but also create new ones. We are committed to having a healthy and growing business. We do not take these decisions lightly and understand how they can create uncertainty. Thank you for sharing your feedback. I wish you the best in your future endeavors. Edwin Robles, SVP and GM of US Higher Ed & Canada

Explore other reviews about Cengage

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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