customer service representative

manager

client relations manager

software engineer

engagement specialist

Cengage Group

Cengage sounded like my dream job. An EdTech company focused on enabling individuals from all ages and walks of life to learn and achieve something more. This mission coupled with the job description sounded like the perfect formula to get me out of my comfortable job & life configuration to up and move to try something new. I regretted it from day 1.

The work environment was fantastic, as were the snacks in the kitchen and most of the people. The work, however, left a lot to be desired (especially for the triangle). For starters, the entirety of the engineering team behind the products that I would be supporting was fired prior to my arrival. My new team mates were just as new as me. Next, the tech stack. Not good. A mix of .NET 2.0 - 4.5, WebForms and MVC. "Poorly written" is relative, but I'd say it was. Local debugging required hours and hours of work and local registry modifications, even then you still might not be successful. Assistance from the prior engineering team would have been helpful. No ReactJS development as described, all we did during my tenure was SQL data entry and help-desk style tickets. I figured React would come in as a rebuild effort for the crusty code we were now responsible for, but there were no plans to upgrade what we had. Multiple times in meetings it came up that the business wasn't even sure if they would continue investing in our team's product. And the cherry on top was the fact that we had zero disaster recovery plans in place for a system that was constantly logging errors, and went down a few times per month. When brought up with the server team they just gave us that look when someone is discretely passing the buck onto you. I had never felt so shafted in my life.

There are many assignments one can get from Cengage, and if the company sounds great to you make sure to solidify exactly what you'll be doing. Maybe this assignment even sounds great to you. Just make sure you ask the right questions, and don't burn your bridges.

I started working here before covid hit. In office, the environment was incredible. Even though it was just a call center job, managers/supervisors truly cared about YOU and I can say with complete honesty that it was a great place to work. This was not a typical call center job, where you were just a number. I remember being told the turnover rate was somewhere between 5-7 years. We moved to WFH, which started out good. Zooms to keep in touch with people, and our teams, and slowly but surely it turned into every other call center remote job, which honestly i understand. It's hard when call volumes are high and they need to keep connecting to more people to get those times down. Things just kept getting worse though. They kept cutting back the incentives that made this company a good place to work with. Raises are on average about 50 cents per year. The time off is probably the ONLY good thing left, but god forbid you try to schedule PTO early in the year, or they make things complicated for you. My supervisors on my team were incredible. Always willing to go out of their way to help me, encourage me, and make me laugh. And I truly feel like that's because I got to know them in person before we all moved WFH. But then, I got laid off. Along with multiple others in CS (though it was all kept EXTREMELY hush hush, I know this because a few of my friends still work in the company), as well as supervisors/managers and many others in the company. They gave a great severance package, but I wasn't even able to say goodbye to the people I made relationships with over the nearly 8 years I was there. My friends have kept me updated on things happening within the walls of Cengage, and it just seems like they keep changing things that don't need to be changed, letting people go who work hard and know what they're doing, and then in turn hiring people for less who end up leaving after training because the job is too much for what they're paying. 

- There are no typical work days - expect the unexpeected
- I learned new skills outside of the scope of my position - I was also judged on those skills and not for what I was hired to do
- Direct management is very different from executive management (not in a good way)
- The company boasts about their work place culture - which is nurtured by various corporate groups and praised by executives. The broad corporate and work place culture is very positive, but on the local level, its not practiced.
- The hardest part of the job is working for a great company, but working for not so great managers. It's the things not said that actually speak the truth. 
- The most enjoyable part of the job is the support from your peers, especially when you have the opportunity to gather together as a group.  We all know the truth of it all,  but for a short time, we just pretend the truth doesn't exist.

At the CEO, COO, etc., executive level, the company, as a whole, is a great working atmosphere. On the surface, it is a very diverse and inclusive company. They have great benefits, perks, and the base pay is comparable with the market. Unfortunately, the work/life balance emphasized by the companies executives corporate wide, is not the sentiment of those that are directors/managers. It is common for salary based management to work long hours to complete tasks and projects. however, hourly employees are expected to complete the same volumn of work without working overtime (as overtime pay is frowned upon). In addition, requiring employees to work on projects that they were not hired for (and outside of their expertise), and expecting results of someone experienced in that skill, is expected.

This company provides a lot of great benefits! They’re very inclusive, and you feel as though you’re making an impact! On what? We’re not sure. 
The distribution center is ran by a husband/wife team that straddle the fine line between conflict at work. If you’re “in good” with them = golden. If not, you’ll eventually be ran off. They’ve recruited more of their family and friends to our team, so they’ve been given the opportunity to learn about us from absolutely nothing and proceed moving up positions quickly! Never mind the people that have worked for this company 20 years and 5 names ago, and that mostly all started out from the very bottom - 3 buildings ago.
A quarter of the year is spent waiting until literally the last 15 minutes of your shift to find out if you’re working over time that day or not. If you rely on a ride home from work, I would think they’d get tired of that quickly. Unless, of course, they don’t mind sitting in the the car for up to 2 hours to see when you’re getting off work that day.
P.S. It feels like ALL of our ethos, values, and even general practices are done in the opposite, and in a foreign code, so it’s acceptable because everyone is just confused. 
But, that’s just at the distribution center. There are always a completely different set of rules for the distribution vs office/administrative work. So, good luck to you!

Work presents challenges and opportunities to take on special tasks or be trained on unique processes, but don't expect that to impact your pay. Raises are not based on the actual work you do. You can take on 15 special processes, tasks, accounts, and your raise will be the same as a person who simply does the bare minimum. You will, however, be pinpointed as a person who actually works, therefore get buried in every single thing that comes along, and shunned if you mention that you have several other tasks to attend to. Words from a manager in another department, "you really just have to wait for people to die off or retire if you want to advance in customer support."
You have quarterly chances at a "bonus" of $450 dollars. They constantly change the guidelines for achieving the total amount, making it near impossible to get more than $200 of it. 
Management in customer support seem to do whatever possible to keep you there. Applying for other departments in the company because you have the skills and want to grow your career? Somehow, you won't be what they are looking for or, "you don't have enough hands on skills yet." This is a conversation that constantly happens amongst customer support agents. It is known.
Cengage has positions across the company that actually allow opportunities for real growth and advancement (or so we hear). DO NOT enter into customer support unless you are okay with being stuck in the same spot for the long run.

For many years, Cengage was a good place to work as an EdTech PM. With the latest changes to leadership and the new GMs, in particular, the company has entered a downward spiral. There is a dogged focus on profitability above all else; one hears little these days about the customers we serve, their needs, how what we will do will meet those needs and drive growth in the market. Employees, technology, and tools we need to produce the products that allow us to maintain our current revenue streams are ruthlessly culled in the name of saving on internal costs.  Leadership makes vague statements about how the mission is to be a top provider of quality content, but the Content org is entirely focused on shipping all development offshore to India, making it virtually impossible for onshore employees to ensure content quality standards are being met. Meanwhile, the head of Product is off chasing waterfalls by investigating AI-enabled product concepts that, as she openly admits, may never materialize into revenue generating opportunities for the company. So the strategy boils down to: we aren't going to keep making the products we make, but we don't yet know what new products we'll make, and in the meantime we'll cut costs by disassembling the  internal mechanisms that allow us to generate revenue under the current model. Basically, we're disassembling the plane while we're flying on it,  and just hoping a alien craft will materialize just in time to save us all from plunging to our deaths. Truly, a solid plan! For job seekers, the TLDR is: save yourself the time and keep looking elsewhere.

Typical day at work allowed me to wear many different hats; my managers always gave me a lot of autonomy to run projects in the ways that made sense.  Working in Editorial department allowed me opportunity to learn something new every day, whether related to contracts, negotiations, writing, editing, content focusing on literature, history, social sciences, humanities, and so forth. Management was encouraging and positive and open to new ideas. Co-workers were always pleasant, helpful, informed, kind, and a joy to work with. Hardest part of job was dealing with budgets and difficult freelancers, vendors, and shifting schedules.  Most enjoyable part was creating a product that would be used by students and librarians for learning; this was immensely rewarding for me.

This job has been a pivotal point in my career! I’m an organized person who takes great pride in my ability to complete tasks swiftly and work in a team. Cengage uses your strengths, allowing you to blossom socially and professionally.  You may even get an opinion (or possibly many opportunities depending on your department), to travel all over the USA! Cengage takes great pride in their products and effort to constantly make thing more user friendly while keeping up with the times and be there 100% for the students. I’m proud to be part of this company and I love how outgoing, kind and supportive my peers and supervisors are. This company is always looking to improve and be the best they can be. They are in it for the right reasons, they embrace diversity and value every last employee. Should you decide to per-sue work with Cengage, you will not regret it. Your leadership skills, time management, public speaking, tech and social skills will all noticeably improve with every day you put into this job! This is and has been a superb experience, it’s hands  down one of my most influential jobs up to this point in my professional career!  I’m proud to represent this company and love the amazing professional connections I have made in my time here.

At Cengage Learning I worked directly with the Marketing team creating online surveys and analyzing data from the previous year.  Cengage had created online surveys for college professors to fill out in order to see how they felt about their product.  I took the first years surveys and upgraded the graphics as well as structure to be more user friendly.

After completing all of the online surveys I then analyzed all of the previous years results.  I took each individual survey's results and regressed the number of professors bought the products as apposed to ones that did not.  I then took all of this data and composed individual graphs and reports and presented them to the marketing team.

My co workers and management were the best group of people I have ever worked with.  They were always willing to help and go the extra mile to make sure I had everything I needed.  They let me work at my own pace and set basic guidelines of when they needed projects to be completed.

The hardest part of my job was having to learn new tasks on a daily basis, such as creating online surveys and graphic designs for them.  However, this turned out to be one of the most enjoyable part of this job as well, since I learned so much from completing new tasks and learning a new trait.  I would recommend working here for anyone interested.

The culture and people are what have kept me at Cengage for years. They have made many strides at improving work life balance, however, there are many downfalls. While you have a lot of time off, and are even given extra days such as volunteer, floating holidays, and wellness days. Its extremely stressful to take time off. The work load is so overwhelming its too stressful to take time off,  as it takes days to catchup. There is no good "backup" structure if someone has to take extended time off work or decides to leave the company, or even accepts a promotion. The workload often falls on other roles (on top of their own job responsibilities.). This creates a lot of stress on managers, and leaders. It also prevents them from being able to do their job. This overall hurts the company, as the job is to maintain and grow business. Also the pay is sickening. They do not offer fair pay for the job responsibilities expected of their employees.  Also - politics were often brought up in a networking channel, which often caused animosity between employees, and no corrective action was taken on those who brought insults into the conversation, instead of accepting all sides of political views. They did create the "speak up line", but not much came of it when you did speak up.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Customer service representative 30 salaries reported	$17.50 per hour
Manager 40 salaries reported	$89,011 per year
Client relations manager 47 salaries reported	$67,025 per year
Software engineer 7 salaries reported	$117,175 per year
Engagement specialist 39 salaries reported	$59,800 per year

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