Steadily declining work environment - Senior Content Developer Cengage Employee Review

2.0
Aug 8, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Cengage Learning provides teaching, learning solutions for the academic, professional and library markets worldwide. The company creates products for higher education which is a noble goal and depending on your area, there are some opportunities to move up. My coworkers are smart and good people.

Cons

For the last year are so, there has been a steady decline in quality of work environment. They have taken away work from home days, crammed us into an open office layout, and flexible hours looks like it is the next to go. Very hierarchical, top down management. The emphasis has been shifting from quality of product to making sure you are sitting at your desk at the right hours. Apparently, yesterday, a high up executive went around the office counting who was seated in their chair so much for the rhetoric of 9 months ago about how the open office layout would let us work from the courtyard. This shift has created an increasingly less comfortable work environment and I will leave as soon as I can find another job.

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.

9
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