Thread regarding Cengage layoffs

@t7+1jmdn9g5q - when you do move on from Cengage, please do unveil your identity here and let us know when you have shared your thoughts candidly on LinkedIn. I would love to read them. Meanwhile, those of us still at Cengage are doing the best we can to balance the need for a paycheck with the dismay at the disintegration of a company that many of us used to enjoy and feel proud of working at. At least in my experience, I found the coworkers in my role or in lateral roles in other departments to be hard-working, intelligent and decent people and certainly not feckless.

I read the piece and it is fair and accurate from what I witnessed with Horizon. I, like you, ate hiding behind this site. I’m just one of the lower paid employees who regularly exceeded expectations and needs a paycheck until the process is completed for my next gig. Then I will name myself, if it makes you feel better.

@t7+1jmdn9g5q:

Like many who leave comments online, it’s clear you didn’t actually read the essay. There’s no "rah-rah cheerleading" or "kool-aid drinking" in this piece.

Also, are you not "hiding behind this site"? Are you perhaps overlooking the fact that your name isn’t displayed with your comment?

You name yourself, sycophant, and I will name myself. I’m quitting soon anyway.

Employees and students deserve better.

The feckless members of the Cenforce do not have the courage to post this on their LinkedIn pages. Instead they hide behind this site.

Much like the rah-rah cheerleading kool-aid drinking author of the hit piece.

Nothing insubordinate about this essay. Love this, and Daniel should have been named.

Employees have the right to respond respectfully when the employer breaks the covenant, especially when the breaking of the contract is done greedily and cruelly.

I saw Daniel’s mask fall off at a higher ed conference he attended for Cengage years ago. He was there with a few other execs to wine and dine university presidents. He was in our booth for hours every day and wouldn’t even make eye contact with the peon Cengage employees who were working the booth and would only interact with other executives. Keep in mind there were maybe 20 employees total at the show, so it took some effort on his part to completely disregard us. This was when the company was coming out of bankruptcy and all the town hall messaging was about coming together as a team…rah rah. That was when I realized he had nothing but contempt for all Cengage employees outside of the c-suite. All of his actions since then have reflected that contempt I witnessed. He is the ideal hatchet man for private equity which is why he’s been with the company for so long.

Done, but we cannot share in LinkedIn out of fear or retaliation, which we just discussed in harassment training 😝. Now that is rich!

So much for Daniel’s much coveted Best Places to Work😎

One last thing before I get back to work, the picture of the Chinese office with “Be Candid” is also rich. Being candid there could one sent to a work camp, or worse.

Please forward the Slate article to all your Cengage friends. Nothing would ignite Daniel more!

he did the whole "we're doing it for the students" when he cut pay by 30% for 5 months during f----ing COVID and still expected/demanded that we still work regular or overtime hours. "We need to focus on our customers!" And in other companies, i've seen the executive team NOT take any pay at all in times like this. What a racket. I hope MH is grinding his teeth tonight.

Always remember when Michael closed down the SF office, he actually used his old line that he was doing it for the students. He needed to cut costs for the students. Talk about tone deaf.

"Yesterday the Ethos Winners were three Indian employees and the company-wide channel was spammed repeatedly with congratulations."

haha, I just looked at that Slack post and instead of replying to the post, people are still spamming the channel with congratulations.

I know more people unhappy with the state of Cengage than those that are proud of working here. Some people feel comfortable telling their managers how sh---y everything us, others do not. We all know the surveys aren't accurate. With this economy, many employees say good or neutral things (if anything at all) because they are afraid of somehow being tracked and retaliated against.

If you ask someone at Cengage how they feel about the Indian CMs, listen to how they hedge their answers. Very few people are enthusiastic, but Cengage keeps trying to make people like it. Yesterday the Ethos Winners were three Indian employees and the company-wide channel was spammed repeatedly with congratulations. It was all higher-ups that pushed this agenda of shipping CMs overseas or are India employees themselves. Maybe it's just coincidence usually the congratulations are in threads for US employee award announcements, and for the Indian employees they decided to keep sending new messages so the channel lit up.

When we had US CMs people across departments would talk about how great they were. Now the most glowing review you hear is "they are fine" and only when you ask.

What really annoys me are the "toxic positive" comments on First Friday slack channel. people yelling yay gale, yay ed2go, yay MILADY, no one cares!

The Slate article led me here. I actually used to work with the Slate author. I left Cengage awhile ago...maybe 5 years into Hansen's tenure. I can't believe he is still there. My question is if there are any true believers left at this point? One of the things that made me crazy my last few years at Cengage were the number of sycophants who bought into the "credo" and all of the other faux-progressive nonsense Hansen would spew at Town Halls. I would constantly hear about how "Cengage is different - we're MISSION BASED!" (whatever that meant) and that "Our CEO really cares!" when the reality was we (my profession at the company at least) was significantly underpaid and layoffs were constant. So are there people STILL running around acting like Cengage is something other than what it is? From this column it sounds like it has only gotten worse.

A great read that captures the toxicity and cultish nature of Cengage. It's all the stuff we've witnessed and talked about on this board for years: leadership alternating love bo----g employees with disposing of them to save a buck on offshore labor, employees being promoted into leadership or management roles based on their fluency in sycophancy instead of their skills and abilities, the doublespeak around how the company values candor (which is really just a trap for figuring out who hasn't bought into the latest propaganda around how this reorg is necessary, and will empower us to better serve customers), the manipulation and "spin" put on data from the Engagement surveys (not to mention the strategic timing of the delivery of those surveys, so data can be collected before the next reorg drops and employee opinions sway more negative), the abuse and systematic overloading of employees who actually know how to get work done to free up time for the sycophants to participate in special "committees" and "groups" that, in the best cases just fail to produce actual value, and in the worst cases invent and mandate new processes and procedures that make it more difficult to get work done efficiently and cost-effectively, or at all. It's been clear for years that the work of Cengage managers is to maintain the illusions: that there is a purpose, a strategy, a direction, a meritocracy, and any sort of ethical guideposts to how the company operates. MH (or his communications team, more likely) likes to get the last word by replying to critical employee reviews on Glassdoor and Indeed, etc. and sure, you can dismiss those as "well only disgruntled employees take the time to write reviews." However the barometer of just how toxic this culture is can be found right here on The Layoff, as they make public the companies with the most heavily trafficked pages on their site. And Cengage has been on that list FOR YEARS. All you have to do is flip through the history of the pages for McGraw and Pearson to see that they aren't nearly as active. And that is saying something, as those companies (from what I understand from talking to employees who work there) aren't perfect either. Cengage is just on another level. So I, for one, am loving this insubordinate queen. Long may she reign!

Anyone can take a quote from "Daniel" in the article, which will lead them right to the GlassDoor review. I wonder how defensive MH will be at the next First Friday.

What an amazing read!

Well, she can't give out the names; perhaps she could be sued by Cengage for defamation?

I really wish she would have called out Michael and Cengage by name. At least you know he is seething at getting skewered as a greedy hypocrite in an elite liberal publication. Michael identifies strongly with the enlightened neoliberal Davos elite so this must feel like a massive betrayal.

Greetings,

This former member of the Cenforce was offered the chance of a lifetime to take what she/her had learned at a bleeding edge ed-tech concern and become their own CEO.

Still, she should feel proud knowing her contributions to the organization were acknowledged and valued. Her contributions over the years and time spent in ethos/credo workshops will have allowed her personal and professional growth.

The newly recruited members of the Cenforce oversees will continue our mission to serve our customers.

Full Stop!

PS - Hopefully, this insubordinate essay will be construed as violating her severance agreement, resulting in more cost savings.