Thread regarding Cengage layoffs

Someone got their privileged little feelings 😢. Get over it. Many Current “leaders” are cartoon villains 🦹

Apollo has them over a barrel, causing them to be ruthless.

What post is that? What are you talking about?

The post about corporate executives and animals is untrue and needs to be deleted.

Cengage competition sees the incompetence of some at the top and senses the unease of the typical hardworking Cengager, are initiating contact with me to discuss opportunities. I am out with the rt opty and money and semblance of stability.

There’s no innovation team because they aren’t interested in innovating anymore. MH wants to be CEO of Coursera, Udemy, General Assembly—anything skills-focused and without the unwanted baggage (his perception of those disciplines, not gospel truth) of the Discovery course areas, the slow and conservative customer base of Higher Ed, Libraries, and most of traditional K12. Private equity just wants their money, they don’t care about the market, the customer, or the longterm fate of the company. So the current trajectory in appears to be to shift into some sort of skills-focused content and tech provider. They’ll sell the stuff they perceive of as deadweight to fund the transition. I don’t think it’ll be successful because the content and learning teams at Cengage are a disaster due to constant reorgs and laughably bad leadership (seriously, where do they find these people? They are like cartoon villains!). Plus there are already companies out there doing the Skills biz well that have a huge head-start and support functional product and marketing teams who know that business. But the point is, when the direction the company is taking is a foregone conclusion, an innovation team (or a functional product team, for that matter) just invites unwanted and potentially dissenting perspectives into the ranks. And Cengage only allows for “yes” people right now.

The funniest experience I witnessed with Fernando was when he was inviting people to have lunch with him. He had lunch for himself brought in and there was pre- packaged deli meat for the plebs.

Does Cengage even have an innovation team anymore? I remember someone at the company put one together and they were running meetings and actually made improvements to some of the products. I remember being shown something like a completely reformatted layout for the 'Cengage Reader' or whatever. I take it whomever was doing that isn't around anymore?

Yeah, I give Cengage (or more accurately, Fernando Bleichmar) credit for at least attempting to innovate with Cengage Unlimited. It was never a perfect solution but it was at attempt at doing something different that addressed the most pressing affordability need. However, that was years ago. And I wouldn't say Cengage is suffering from an Innovator's Dilemma, at present. If anything, the company's recent moves have been to quash innovation (i.e.: they threw the baby out with the bathwater on Infuse and didn't even attempt to iterate on the model or address gaping holes in the marketing strategy) and instead have resorted to very regressive internal cost-cutting measures (letting the private equity wolves in, shipping the bulk of content work offshore to India, etc., embracing YET ANOTHER platform migration with substandard vetting to market/discipline needs). At present, there's nothing happening at Cengage that I would call innovative. Some of the other publishers are innovating via launching and supporting LMS-embedded models, creating new product models (Vantage, Illumine, & Evergreen), and developing of 1st edition titles (Cengage has one or two, but compare that to the yearly output of Norton, Sage, or even OUP). But if anyone has the idea that Cengage is some kind of innovation hub, I'd say that is a proof of concept for their marketing investments rather than a reflection on the success of their product strategy and execution, which barely exists at this point and has taken a VERY CLEAR backseat to regressive cost-cutting measures since the Apollo investment.

The larger publishers are going to suffer from the Innovator's Dilemma, and they have resources to stay afloat but will struggle to adapt. Cengage probably even had the most creative attempt at adaptation with Cengage Unlimited (that doesn't mean it was successful but they made an attempt at innovation). The big 'content producers' are all on the same trajectory--constant layoffs and trying to grow by shrinking. If you want to stay in the industry your best bet is finding a fresh, upstart company that is ideally founder led, or at least not controlled by financiers and lawyers who don't understand the industry.

Meanwhile Cengage Unlimited is having its 5th price increase this April. So much for the "affordable" option.

Keep reciting that mantra. These days, summoning a fake but believable smile while repeating "everything is fine" will get you promoted to a management role at Cengage, where maintaining the illusion is the primary business objective. LOL.

But Cengage bought Visible Body!! Everything is fine!! Right? Right? /s

There are a handful of smaller publishing companies who are moving on the market void created by the larger publishers (Cengage, Houghton Mifflin, and McGraw ) disavowing their commitment to serve the needs of educators and students in favor of serving the financial interests of private equity owners. These smaller publishers still bother to hire actual publishing professionals, still host tables at discipline conferences, and still bother to develop first edition content in course areas outside of the Gen Ed required courses. Publishing is a small world, and you can bet they are watching the exodus of longtime Cengage employees with interest and an opportunistic eye. While these individuals may no longer be of value to the Cengage business model (as it attempts to undergo yet another nebulous and still-undisclosed transformation into something other than educational publishing), they are still very valuable in the market that Cengage and other large publishers are vacating. So I say, good on those publishers for recognizing and snapping up that talent. And good on those former employees for registering that the best professional move they can make is to move to another company that is in a position to capitalize on the opportunity created by the larger publishers' missteps.

GW is the perfect example of how to do it right.

1. Family founded
2. Zero debt
3. Resisted the easy money from investment bankers
4. Flew under the radar
5. Not heavily tilted to college market
6. An ESOP owned owned company
7. Didnt go crazy on sh---y technology bells and whistles
8. Benefitted tremendously from all the COVID money that went to high schools

9 . Skilled trades focused. (Yeah, thanks for ruining Delmar, Cengage leadership.)

10. Solid, mature leadership.

It's a master class in how the tortoise beat the hare.

Many multimillionaires at GW have been there for 20-30 years.

It is truly the last lifeboat.