I am a good and loyal Cengage employee. I choose a smaller salary because I want to save students money and improve their outcomes. I live and breathe the Credo. I put work in during nights and weekends because my team has shrunk. I am passionate about the student and believe in Michael’s vision of changing lives by disrupting the Ed Tech industry. I have been told I am an asset to the organization. Michael will make sure those of us who believe and contribute are saved.
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Credo, I love how you ask us whether you’ll be spared and when we answered the question with logic and history in mind, you lashed out calling us bitter haters. I asked if it was satire because I thought you were joking when you told us you choose a blind-leading-the-blind system as you “live and breathe the credo” (LOL). I do very much agree the textbook industry needs disrupting, but McCengage is not that disruptor. You people consistently fail at achieving what real tech companies already do. I left your nose-diving industry and now work for a full-on SaaS (translation for you: actual tech) company. Small team, few costs, consistent wins. If that’s the direction of your credo, you’re more a cost than an asset, and MH doesn’t care to “save” you.
I think your screen name is a misnomer. It should really be Fredo. Wake up and stop drinking the Kool-aid.
So many losers at this company who are thankful for their 1% merit raise. They actually believe the propaganda being spewed. It’s just pathetic.
HaHa! – good one, Credo! It was the failure of MindTap that begat Unlimited, and the failure of Unlimited that led to this merger. The hits just keep on coming!
MindTap has won multiple Codie awards and is recognized as one of the most advanced platforms in EdTech.
I was at Cengage when KS was hyping white glove service for students and faculty. During his always embarrassing opening speech at the sales conference he had a scripted call with a service rep to illustrate how amazing it would be. How did that work out?
@10ImQVPu-6hks Slow clap for this post. So much truth.
Few will be spared if this merger goes through, and if we are calling those who remain with the organization the "lucky ones" - it is rather easy to determine who will win out on retaining any particular position: Look at how much you make and compare this with how much per year your opposite makes. In 9 times out of 10, the lesser-paid person will win the position. Longevity is your enemy in this situation, as those with more tenure tend to be paid more than more recent-hires. A successful history matters naught - Cengage discards President's Club winners alongside the rest with little second thought.
It is funny, thinking competitively, in any highly competitive "Intro" adoption situation, the least-scary competing PubCos are, almost without fail, Cengage and Pearson. There are a few exceptions to this (math, engineering) but not many. In both cases, the software products on offer are substandard and just loathed by faculty and students alike. Be it Revel or MyLabs or the sprawling mess that is MindTap, these programs are home-grown, poorly supported and wonky. Also working against these Pubcos is their push to digital, at all costs. Simply by refusing to provide quotes that do not include the often-unwanted digital product, Cengage and Pearson knock themselves out of 75% of all potential adoption situations. It is wrong-headed leadership and business strategy that is completely out of step with the marketplace.
Ironically, one of the more competitive PubCos out there has been McGraw Hill. Their software isn't too bad, comparatively speaking, and they are unafraid to do what it takes to submit a winning bid. Deliver all-print product priced well under $100? No problem for the MH folks. Seeking a newer-type of discout option? Forget schemes like Cengage Unlimited (which amounts to eBook access for $120 per semester!), McGraw has wisely - and aggressively - sold Inclusive Access solutions into interested departments.
All of this is ironic because it is the Cengage goofballs that seem destined to lead the merged company, if that deal goes through. Hansen and his clueless cronies will s— the competitive will to live out of whatever is left of the McGraw personnel and spirit, paving the way even further for the rest of the industry to s— the base and the very life-blood out of these bloated concerns.
As great as life can be in the EdPub industry (and it really is a fun and rewarding industry to work in), I daresay it would be better to exit the industry altogether than to remain employed by one of these failing giants. Life is simply no fun when your job is constantly on the line, and it is no fun to sit outside of these situations and watch hundreds and hundreds of faithful employees lose their livelihoods thanks to inept and completely out-of-touch leadership.
Sales force layoff will obviously happen and is needed. We don't rely as much as salespeople now as we transition to digital. Michael has said content, tech and marketing people won't be impacted. Its a complementary merge.
Credo... our dm in co lo rad o literally whines to our professors, “how are we going to stay in business if you don’t buy our books, waaaaa” That’s your winning for you.
Anonymous- of course there will be a large sales force lay-off. They are being completely transparent about that. How could there not be? That’s how mergers work.
Credo is a trailblazer! Keep up the good work!
Credo,
I do recognize your posts as trolling, but it's always fun discussing the titanic disaster that is Cengage. A few last observations for you. . .
They didn't cut a third of the sales force last year and the entire slate of employees based in San Francisco because all of these people lacked the skills to navigate the "transition to digital," lol. Those hundreds of people were laid off because sales were tanking and Unlimited completely failed to turn the sales fortunes around.
You aren't taking market share when your year-over-year sales results are down by double digits, in terms of both units and revenue.
Looking ahead, the path is clear IF the government approves the merger.
The addition of McGraw to Cengage Unlimited will be announced within a week or so of the deal closing, ideally in time for January sales.
And then the heads begin rolling.
Your Nat'l Sales Meeting in December has been cancelled and moved to February. Why? Because the December-January time period will be devoted to firing 3-400 sales professionals. Their committees have already determined WHO will go, by the way. I wonder which list you might be on?
And if the merger is not approved?
It is bloodbath time. Massive downsize/restructure of the sales organization, with easily 2/3rds of the field sales people losing their jobs.
Either way, it's going to be quite a show.
Bankruptcy!? LOL The company is on solid financial footing, and I haven't heard one analyst on any of the calls bring up bankruptcy. We got our financial house in order in the last reorganization.
The numbers are uneven now, but we are taking market share away from competitors and digital growth is exploding. The company is undergoing change and the people whose positions were closed didn't have the skills necessary to work in an Ed Tech company. Maybe you were one of them. That's sad, but this company is disrupting so fast we don't have time to slow down.
Unlimited will go down in marketing textbooks and courses around the nation as a great notorious example in how market cannibalization can fail miserably and tank an organization and completely destroy a business and ruin many people's lives in the process.
@Credo
Don't be a fool, don't let Hansen pull the wool over your eyes.
You can be selling digital codes or donuts, it doesn't matter - the only metric that counts is this: how much more money have you made this year than last year?
If the answer is "er, we are making less than before" and if you are Hanson, you have to turn in a different kind of "growth" – savings via downsizing.
That is what has been happening over the last seven years, and that is what is scheduled to happen again during the 1Q of 2020, per Glorious Leader. You close entire headquarters, you fire your director of sales, you lay off hundreds of employees at a time.
Cengage is not exploding - whatever gave you that idea? Stop listing to the sales meeting b.s., listen instead what is said in the quarterly earnings calls. That is where the real truth is laid out and is confronted - how is the company doing financially?
It doesn't matter that you double or triple one little corner of the business. What matters is that the business as a whole is tanking - and badly. The MH merger is a hail mary, and you had better pray that it goes through. If not, then Cengage will be left alone to face a crushing debt payment that lurks just around the corner. Chances are extremely high (according to forecasters) that Cengage is forced to declare a second bankrupcty. And this time it will not be a simply little reorg. This time it will be a wholesale dismantling of the company.
I spent two decades working for that company, a good handful of them under Hansen. It is more a cult now than an actual company, and only the most foolish are reaching willingly for their cup of the kool-aid.
cengage is merging with McGraw because cengage and unlimted have failed. full stop.
Print is shrinking but digital growth and Cengage is exploding. You have to look at the metrics that are meaningful. We have posted 3-digit gains in digital growth every single year.
@Credo
That wasn't even a good try.
The Learning (Higher Ed) sector of Cengage has posted double-digit decreases every single quarter since The Glorious Leader took over. Not a single quarter of growth - just a continuing succession of massive losses and excuse-making.
Cengage has changed, alright. But it has disrupted no one. Unlimited was a blip. Most Cengage-adopting faculty welcomed the cost relief Unlimited provided, most non-Cengage adopters saw the scheme exactly for what it was - a blind grasp for marketshare that, in itself, was a complete rip off. Unlimited turned out to be a $120 eBook. $60 eBook if a student is lucky enough to take two Cengage courses in the same semester.
Cengage continues to be the cost leader in Higher Ed, they charge more per book than any other PubCo out there. And they are rock-bottom when it comes to compensation. You are soaring, alright - soaring straight to the unemployment line.
You bitter haters mock Cengage because you were stuck in the past and couldn't keep up with the change and disruption we were causing. Now we've shed the dead weight and are soaring in the industry. You can't stand that your old print dinosaur company is gone.
Seriously??
You think disrupting the textbook industry is satire?
Is this satire?