I was a SME and they are forcing me to be a "Learning Designer"
The learning department has been broken up
They are now trying to pay me less
Did anyone hear about this yet?
13 replies (most recent on top)
Every community college on earth has thousands of low IQ adjuncts who are SME'S.
GET OVER YOURSELF
Simple solution. Tell them you're not going to work for less.
They will do one of three things:
give you a raise
pay you your current rate
let you go
Michael used to frequently say that Cengage was a "mission based" company and that "making money is not our primary mission." The undertone of this was "you are all severely underpaid relative to the market because we are doing humanitarian work." Obviously this was infuriatingly hypocritical considering Cengage is owned by private equity whose sole mission is to make short term profits usually at the expense of employees and product quality. Not to mention that Michael likely receives massive bonuses tied the cuts he makes.
Ah. The race to the bottom continues.
"Greetings,
Cengage is a mission-based company . . . "
Man, this boosheet isn't even clever, let along funny. IPS has become as tedious and disconnected as Hansen, himself.
"you’ve been flooding this board with snark and speculation dressed up as truth"
More useless snark and whining from you. There was nothing speculative about this post, this was someone sharing what happened to them. You're really wasting your time here, dude.
Ah yes, another performative eye-roll masquerading as insight, meanwhile, you’ve been flooding this board with snark and speculation dressed up as truth. This place was supposed to be for sharing real, helpful info about layoffs and transitions, not a stage for bitter ex-employees to air their grievances and flex their keyboard superiority. If you want to vent, fine, but let’s not pretend you’re some noble truth-teller when all you’re really doing is muddying the waters for people trying to get actual answers.
I agree with you that the IPS posts are in poor taste given the circumstances.
Definitely the doing of someone who still thinks putting “I speak satire as a first language” in their dating profile makes them seem clever and edgy. That act has been worn out for a while, but some people just cannot let go of the opportunity to feel like they are “in” on a joke that only an exclusive subset is smart enough to get.
IPS, we're talking about people's livelihoods. The vast majority of people working in this organization are concerned about how they are going to pay rent, childcare etc., at a time in history where cost of living is through the roof. Nobody is going to get on board with your nonsensical corporate chatter right now. Ethos? Credos? Behave.
So true. Years ago, they did the same thing with Content Manager/Content Production Manager roles. Took two roles, made them into one, provided zero training and slotted existing employees into them. It took a few years for that team to get on its feet and build a knowledge base needed to function properly, then Cengage leveraged the knowledge base they built to ship the whole department offshore to India, under the caveat of those employees being a part of our “global” company. Now, I suspect we’re seeing the beginning of the same process for the Portfolio Manager and Learning Designer roles. Combining LD and SME, combining ARM and PPM. Getting rid of Cengage Academic and rebranding as Cengage Global. You can see the seeds of the same process taking root in different roles.
The irony to me is that our national discourse so often focuses on the impact that immigrant labor has on citizen’s access to jobs. But immigrants into this country often work in roles American citizens don’t want. Meanwhile, corporations ship white collar jobs (which sustain the middle class) offshore to their global employees and face zero repercussions for doing so.
I think it’s fair to say we are living history in every sense.
They have also completely eliminated the “product” in the portfolio product team. Now, those folks are just portfolio managers.
This is a blow when it comes to positioning yourself for roles at other companies, because the job title portfolio manager doesn’t translate nearly as well as its predecessor.
But Cengage has a long history of completely changing job titles/remits and them slotting existing employees into them without much consideration for how it matches to their abilities or aspirations. They just figure you’ll quit if you don’t like it. And they don’t care if you quit, they’ll just hire someone else for cheaper. The business objective is to keep operating costs as low as possible, not to earn employee loyalty or approval.
Greetings,
Cengage is a mission-based company, and if your focus is solely on compensation, then it's best to move on.
While we are on the bleeding edge of ed-tech, a vertical which Cengage continues redefining, our employees' ethos must embody and align with our credo - to change how students learn.
Be fortunate that you had the opportunity to work for such a highly regarded company. I'm sure prospective employers will be impressed with your time at Cengage.
Full Stop!
"They are now trying to pay me less"
Did someone tell you this? So far, I didn't hear anything about pay deduction.