Am I the only one feeling like the course leads are going to be the only content managers left by the end of project horizon? Idk it just feels like layoffs in content creation will happen again this year.
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@4bbz+1qR9qkGS Astounding but true.
The fatal error occurred when they brought the consultants in and decided all the content Cengage produced was interchangeable and could essentially be automated. "Silos" could be broken down and, most importantly, entire departments with institutional knowledge of specific markets could be slashed.
SMEs cost money. People with real publishing world skills like copyediting cost money. It's cheaper to lay those people off and hire them back as jobbers.
Content development jobs were reduced to templated cut and paste processes. Set a schedule, email the ICs and authors, send out the contracts. It boils down to a lot of paper shuffling. They hired some tech people to automate the job as much as possible so content developers could take on as many projects as possible.
The problem is when the people with subject matter expertise are jobbers they don't have any investment in your product. They do a job and move on. And when the in-house content developers have no expertise aside from moving paper from one folder to the next, bad things happen. Especially when they have to juggle too many products with not enough help. The quality eroded and professors noticed.
"Content development at Cengage is one of the most dead end careers you can pursue."
This is an astounding observation to make of a publishing company, whose true value in the education equation is (wait for it) content.
Content development at Cengage is one of the most dead end careers you can pursue. They stripped all skill requirements or subject matter expertise out of the role over a decade ago and turned it into a coordinator role. It's just lining up outside resources and keeping them on time.
For all of the talk about quality products this company sure doesn't give a rats a-s about people who create the content.
Some coke-addled consultant came up with all this just so private equity can increase the eventual sale price of the company by 4-6%.
CPI is a branch of Cengage in India.
Course lead is a new position/role. 90% of 2026 titles are being sent to CPMs , which are basically CPI's CM role. To support the CPMs in India, who are all pretty new and learning the ropes, there will be course leads now. All the course leads are CMs transitioning into this role. So if a CPM in India is managing an accounting title, they would talk to the accounting course lead, whoever that is, if they run into issues with the project.
That's what it sounds like anyway.
What are course leads and what is CPI? I was laid off a while ago so I don’t know these terms
It was really telling that in the Product meeting about this, someone on Tuesday directly asked if the "Course Lead" roles will be transitional or a permanent position. Rebecca wouldn't commit one way or another. This leads me to believe that the "Course Lead" roles may be Cengage trying to use experienced CMs to train the CPMs (CPI CMs) as a stopgap. Once they deem CPMs are performing "well enough" (which we all know doesn't mean they need to actually do well) it sounds to me like they will eliminate the Course Lead role altogether.