Thread regarding Cengage layoffs

Isn't it time for your 4th boostah so you can order a stupid starbucks? fjb...

Unbelievable one of these guys just blamed Biden (in office for barely a year) for things he doesn’t like about Gen Z. He probably blames Biden for all his own failures in life too. Sorry man, it’s not him, it’s you.

@4wcg+1eY444aB So true. I hadn’t thought of it like that. There are no new product innovations. No new growth. No need for talented people.

So Cengage and publishing in general has become a collector of talentless stooges who believe their social justice and post modernism thought fits perfectly. Money be damned!

I've been here too long making easy money, you reach a certain place here at Cengage a step above the lowly DM's and life is much better. I will tell you this, with each new generation of low IQ college grads the culture adjusts to accommodate the incoming nonsense. With millennials it was all about managing your personal brand, (facebook, twitter, Instagram, linkedin etc ) and telling the brainwashed nitwits they were going to be their very own CEO's while simultaneously being owned and never figuring out the goal posts were moving every semester to make sure your payouts were minimized come bonus time. They never figured it out still haven't and the clever GenXers split years ago long gone before the millennials filled the lower ranks.
Then the zoomers are here and we don't even hide the fact the bonuses suck and you you're most likely not going to bonus and they don't care as long as they get to be whatever gender and furry they want to be. We offer them a safe space to be weirdo's and that's payment enough for this lost generation. Thank you Biden for this latest influx of low IQ, low paid mouth breathers, we couldn't have done it without you. Please get your 'vaccines' and 'boosters' and don't forget to download your digital passport you stupid zoomers...

@2kds+1eY444aB Very interesting. I was at Cengage for the acquisition and many years after. I was just a peon at the time and had no idea Dunn put that deal together. I remember for the longest time it looked like Bertelsmann was going to acquire us...and then the bidding price went through the rood because private equity was on a feeding frenzy right before the crash. The Thomson family were absolute geniuses when it came to cutting bait on their companies at the right time. They did it with radio, newspapers and textbooks. Some rich old Canadians up there.

Anyway, I worked in production and K. Brooks was our hatchet man brought in to streamline operations. He actually did a lot of things that made sense like consolidating 5 photo acquisition teams doing the exact same thing down to one. He also ruthlessly outsourced huge chunks of the company and was primarily responsible for turning our product into a commodity. He definitely executed on the "strip" part of strip and flip. The problem was that by the time the company was ready to be flipped the market crashed and you know the rest...

He was a weird guy. He would periodically meet with large groups of us and lecture us on not embracing our jobs getting slashed and outsourced. He would admonish everyone to read Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat so we would understand the wisdom behind his decisions. He told us we all needed to learn how to code and gain new skills so we would be ready when he eventually outsourced or automated our jobs. The saddest part was he had more than a few lackeys who lapped up his every word and were looking forward to his dystopian workplace nightmare. I swear Tr-mp probably won a lot of votes because of guys like him.

@2uvs+1eY444aB He sure did. It's been a while, so my memory is not perfect on this but he'd been rather unceremoniously let go from Thomson and this was his chance to settle some old scores in addition to making a huge "finders fee."

So he brought the acquisition opportunity to APAX all wrapped in a bow, or so at least he thought. He was named CEO. His long-time buddy, D. Shaffer was named Cengage Chairman and The Senior VP of Sales was his protege R. Foley. A former Thomson consultant, B. Rieders who did years of work for Dunn, ran strategy.

If it would have been a cash deal, it may have worked but APAX funded the entire acquisition on debt JUST before the entire world financial market came unglued.

I guarantee you Hansen's only goal is to shed the rest of the debt via some type of bankruptcy or merger. It's a pretty solid company at that point.

Didn't work out so well for any of those original Cengage folks.

@2vto+1eY444aB Dunn put the APAX acquisition together?

@2jqe+1eY444aB. I can guarantee you one thing. There is not one person who was either in charge of doing the acquisition or tasked with implementing the acquisition itself who doesn't sleep like a baby at night. All you have to do is look at their LinkedIn profiles. They are either:

1. Happily retired with a bunch of cash, now sitting on non-profit boards.
2. Doing the same thing to other companies that they did to Thomson/Cengage.
3. Have started other education companies, which they soon will dump to make a quick buck.

Probably the guy who got "screwed" and it's not like I feel sorry for him, is R. Dunn. He put the investment deal together and thought he would be able to quickly flip it or take it public. Neither worked out and he was left holding the bag.

A great example of a pretty decent and smart guy being totally detached from the on-ground reality of the business.

@2qit+1eY444aB So true about your last line. It's kind of like driving by the scene of a bad traffic accident. You want to look away, but you cant.

I found this site because one of my good friends was unceremoniously let go from Cengage in a restructure, so I googled "Cengage Layoffs" and this site appeared.

I check back infrequently. I was there before Thomson became ITP. And the ten year period of mid 1990's-2000's was an absolute blast. I took great pride in what I did, as did my colleagues and friends who are almost all gone from the company. Some have passed away and I still miss them.

I don't know if Jeff Bezos himself could have prevented what has transpired since the APAX acquisition. The business had so many bad legacy decisions baked into it that were impossible to unwind. The ridiculous debt that it took on was totally unsustainable and I think the people at APAX knew that.

But this site, while in addition to its hilarious trolls is pretty much a living obituary for Cengage as it chronicles its slow, painful demise.

"The really sad (for Cengage) result of all of this is that the company loses all of that experience and institutional knowledge just to achieve a short term savings of $15-20,000 bucks. I get that the company is in survival mode and that the C-Suite is tap dancing to keep this show a-going, but there is no long term success possible here. Not with business practices such as those."

Everything you wrote is spot on, but I would argue that the c-suite is likely aware and indifferent to the dumping of institutional knowledge. They are consultants running Cengage for the short term benefit of private equity and institutional knowledge or building a thriving, innovative company is not their objective. They are focused on managing the decline keeping Cengage stripped to the bones so it is an appealing target for an acquisition or merger.

"Cengage lifers are blind to the fact that "Senior Executive Manager" isn't all that impressive when you're getting paid a bottom of the market salary."

Here is the ugly truth about working for Cengage. And it seems to be a hidden truth to many of the very young people working there:

Yes, Cengage pays well below the industry average for positions. That much is evident on sites like Glassdoor, which tracks and reports such things. A position that commonly pays, say, $72,000 will be a $53,000 position at Cengage, in terms of salary.

But all positions most everywhere are "banded" these days. This means that for, say, a sales rep or an administrative assistant or a marketing manager, there is a salary range that is rather "locked in" for that level of employee. Cengage will hire someone in at as low a point on that salary band as they can, that much is documented and is not surprising. . .

It is when one reaches that "Senior Executive Basketweaver" level of higher-end pay for their position that their days are numbered. Senior-Executive-Somethingorothers do not last long within Cengage. Once you reach a relatively comfortable level of salaried pay you are unceremoniously terminated, in favor of a new, less expensive, usually much younger hire. There is no warning, there is no "cause" . . . it just happens. One day you are merrily doing your job, the next you receive a summons to report to a meeting room or to phone an 800 number.

The uppers make a big deal of being "transparent" but there is no transparency in this practice. It arrives without warning and without reason, other than their desire to hire someone less expensive in. Or not - many positions are simply wiped from the org chart and the work formerly associated with that position meted out to other underpaid employees.

The really sad (for Cengage) result of all of this is that the company loses all of that experience and institutional knowledge just to achieve a short term savings of $15-20,000 bucks. I get that the company is in survival mode and that the C-Suite is tap dancing to keep this show a-going, but there is no long term success possible here. Not with business practices such as those.

By the way, for those current Cengage employees reading these boards and wondering why people post the things they do - things like I have shared above? It is because there are hundreds - and very possibly even thousands by now - of us who were in your shoes, and who found themselves dumped because Hansen & Co. couldn't figure out how to run a proper publishing company. There is a large collection of folks who drop in here from time to time just because it is so pleasing to watch a once grand old ship slip quietly, inch by inch, into the salty brine.

"Thomson built its business by buying really great companies...Brooks Cole, Wadsworth (etc) and packaged them into a monolith."

Yes, indeed.

There was a glorious period during the ITP-Thomson days, it only lasted eight years or so, where the company functioned with centralized infrastructure where it made sense to do so (warehousing, finance, HR, etc.) but the siloed imprints you speak of were left more-or-less intact. This allowed the company to streamline resources and costs, and take advantage of their scale, while still retaining the culture and history of the pubcos they had acquired. That was a fairly glorious time, once it got going. Editorial types continued doing their thing and sales people were able to cross-sell quality product with relative abandon.

And then the internal consolidation began. Thomson became Cengage, imprints disappeared, and the last of those passionate content types scattered to the winds. Where once Thomson employees used to enthuse about a new first edition title that offered a fresh take on Intro-to-whateveritis, Cengage employees now get enthusiastic over hollow sloganeering about "transparency" and "mission" and sell-through gimmicks.

It is really too bad. That company put out some stellar content for a very long time.

@1uqj+1eY444aB I was at ITP during those days! We probably know each other. Your point on "publishing never left, Cengage left publishing" is well taken.

You actually say what I was trying to say. After all those years of raising prices and putting out terrible products, (does anyone remember Thomson Now, which became Cengage Now, which became Mind Tap, or "Mind Trap?"

They raised prices so high and put out such terrible products that there was nothing left to innovate.

It should be easy for smaller companies and start-ups, who do not have that pricing and cost legacy to create solid products that add more value for significantly less.

I'm long gone from the game, so that must be what is happening. Good for you.

Thomson built its business by buying really great companies...Brooks Cole, Wadsworth, PWS, Boyd Fraser, Course Technology, Delmar, Southwestern, West, Harcourt and packaged them into a monolith. Pearson and McGraw did the same thing.

At the same time, they destroyed the wonderful culture and people who built those companies. I used to love going to the Brooks Cole office in Monterey. Most late afternoons, you would find a co-----l party on the deck where people would talk product and authors. It was awesome. No one took themselves super seriously. That all changed about mid-1990s.

My hope is that the new breed of smaller, agile, privately-owned companies with the same passion are out there and that those days will return. For all I know, they are already here.

"The MBA-fueled brains running the teetering Cengage ship put their highly educated brains together and came up with All You Can Eat."

Without a doubt. There are plenty of incompetent MBAs. Simply acquiring an MBA - even one from a top-25 program - does not automatically confer wisdom or competence.

However, most capable and ambitious people working in Corporate America acquire an MBA by mid-career. The reason is because it is part of a straightforward path to advancing your career. Of course it is possible to have success without one, but it's usually easier to advance with it. Companies prefer MBA candidates because it signals a baseline understanding of business. Take a look at job postings for Fortune 50 companies - the vast majority prefer or require an MBA or specialized grad degree. It's just one piece, but it's a helpful one. Capable people acquiring MBAs is more of a correlation vs causation. That's why top corporations throw ridiculous sums of money at graduates of top-25 programs. They are all competing for limited resources of capable people.

This brings us to Cengage and its workforce. I knew lots of people at Cengage who acquired MBAs, and the vast majority of them left within a year or two of graduating. The reasons are twofold: 1) An MBA opens up many more appealing and lucrative options outside of Cengage 2) Cengage does not value MBAs

To be clear, I am only referring to the business functions inside Cengage -- product management, marketing, operations, etc. Someone who manages a team of acquisition editors isn't going to benefit much from a formal business education because its such a specialized job. But a product director who is trying to size markets and anticipate demand absolutely should understand baseline business fundamentals.

It is entirely fair to question the value of MBAs. Plenty of smart people have and mountains of literature has been written on the subject. A lot of startups don't care much about MBAs. However, Cengage is a company that presumably values higher education and acquiring credentials. Their business wouldn't exist without it. The fact that the company neither values nor attracts MBAs at any level below the c-suite is an embarrassment.

"I look on LinkedIn to see where the ones who left went and a lot of them seem to be spinning their wheels in lateral-move jobs in the industries they left for."

Only if you're focused on titles. My current title may look like a lateral move from Cengage, but my salary says otherwise. Cengage inflates job titles to make up for their uncompetitive salaries. Cengage lifers are blind to the fact that "Senior Executive Manager" isn't all that impressive when you're getting paid a bottom of the market salary.

"So after decades of artificial price increases . . . the market finally blew it all up. It will never come back. The people currently in the business are just trying to survive."

I was just thinking about this the other day. For nearly a decade - when Cengage was Thomson and Thomson was ITP - salesfolk would spend months quoting prices to interested profs. And then, sometime in the latter part of May, the company would jack pricing up by 5%, 10%, 12%. For years, they did this!

To your second point, though - publishing never left. Cengage left publishing. Pearson, too.

The PubCo life is as rich and as wonderful as it always was, provided one works with the correct companies. The big three get most of the attention, but that market share they are losing year after year is largely being lost to those smaller and mid-sized PubCos who do still innovate and care about delivering quality content. Sure, there is OER and piracy and all the rest, but the business is as strong as it ever was.

Believe it or not, pub reps are still making those giant bonus checks and old-school Editors are still revered.

Not at Cengage, though. Definitely not at the likes of that company.

"There are almost no MBAs at Cengage outside of c-level leadership."

Consider this:

The MBA-fueled brains running the teetering Cengage ship put their highly educated brains together and came up with All You Can Eat.

Er - excuse me - "Cengage Unlimited".

Many, many corporate dolts out there hold MBAs. The key is not to hire dolts to run your company;)

I worked at cengage for 10 years, high school grad, no college. Outpaced everyone in my region, consistently. Second home in Molokai, semi - retired monitor my trades, surf, fish, ski, se-y woman here, another woman at my other home. One thing I learned in life, common sense isn't so common, and the most ignorant people I ever met were college grads at cengage. The cliff is coming lemmings.

Oh I don’t know. I look on LinkedIn to see where the ones who left went and a lot of them seem to be spinning their wheels in lateral-move jobs in the industries they left for.

@pfw+1eY444aB. I was laughing so hard I had to step away before responding. You are so correct. Here's a better one. In circa 2009, I had a senior executive at Cengage ask what an LMS was. I'm not kidding.

Publishing was just a wild business with no comparison. You didn't need smart business people. If you could drink, were well-read, and were personable, you could have a fantastic career. It was an oligopoly. Everyone did the same thing at every company.

There was very little to innovate. I heard someone once say that Lofton, Psychology was the last innovation because it turned a textbook into a coffee table-style work of art.

Salespeople sent books out, then went door to door talking to their professor buddies. Editors signed new authors with new book ideas. Marketing managers essentially made flyers, worked campus and went to conferences. Pedagogy mattered....not to students, but to professors and publishing wonks it did. Finance people just counted sales and expenses. There was no technology to worry about.

Think about it. How fun does that sound? It was AWESOME. The numbers just piled up because more people were going to college every year and there was no other place to get the information you needed for a class other than going to the library.

Technology changed it all. Used books were first. If you've ever been to MBS in Missouri, the warehouse is blue...because IBM built the whole infrastructure. I'm sure it's dead now too. They deserved it.

But the internet changed it all, by making information accessible.

And so back to your point. People in publishing were so insulated, set in their ways, untrained and had no innovation. No one was willing to take the risk to blow it all up. And no one knew with it once it was blown up.

So after decades of artificial price increases and every non-ethical business practice on the planet, such as holding returns and channel stuffing to make numbers, and selling new books to used book companies the market finally blew it all up. It will never come back.

The people currently in the business are just trying to survive. It must be a terrible way to make a living. But so is working for an airline or selling office furniture.

There are almost no MBAs at Cengage outside of c-level leadership.

Senior and mid-level management consists of publishing lifers who were promoted because they stayed and had some ambition. They are all illiterate when it comes to business, yet these are the people tasked with building the business cases for future investment. Look at their LinkedIn profiles and their undergrads are in English, history, polisci, etc. A few have grad degrees in the humanities. I have not seen a single one with a business undergrad or MBA.

This isn't just credential elitism either. I sat in many meetings with senior leaders who were shockingly ignorant of marketing, finance, consumer research, operations, etc. They didn't understand the very basics when it came to things like sizing a market, testing a product with consumers or creating a marketing plan. These were all people who controlled multi-million dollar budgets.

That is not normal. At most companies of Cengage's size senior leaders (and most mid-level leaders) are required to have an MBA or at LEAST a business undergrad. How can you run a successful business when the people in charge are completely ignorant of business basics? You can't.

True story: One CMO came on board from outside the publishing industry. She was so shocked by the fact that the vast majority of marketing employees had no formal business or marketing training that she mandated everyone take an online marketing basics course.

English and liberal arts majors don't have tons of options. There is zero chance anyone from even a decent business school would consider that train wreck.

One of the greatest slight of hands ever is the higher education publishing business convincing people that it "helps learners."

All you need to do is go to the linkedin profiles of 90% of the people in publishing. They all say "I love learning!" Yeah right.

They just hired a bunch of young ladies here at the Kentucky office. We will see how long they stay, too attractive for this place.

I remember whenever we would bring in a new employee who came from an outside industry. They would be so excited at first because they got suckered into the recruiting hype that they were somehow making a "difference" working for a publishing company that is owned by private equity. The first month was learning the reality of a deeply dysfunctional company. After 2-3 months they would have a permanent glazed over look in their eyes. 95% of them left the company and industry after 1-2 years. People who have options don't last long at Cengage.