former Manager here

I am a former manager who worked at Cengage. Very sad to see the state that it is in now. I'm still very close with people still there wgho are high up in the chain so I wanted to share some rumors ive heard from people

the pivot to India isn't working. the quality of work they are seeing is poor. I mean pi-s poor. drafts coming back with missing chapters, things coming in late or not at all, time zone communication causing frustration. they wre not prepared for this at all and this is their main worry

morale is so low right now that some people aren't showing up for work or checking in for work for days at a time. managers don't care or report it.

given the morale & attendance situation, there is rumored talk of a making folks work in office, no wfh allowed anymore. if i had to venture to guess i'd say that office will not be anywhere near the east or west coast (ohio, kentucky)

everyone thinks the kentucky office is delusional

So yeah thats all I got. Was there a christmas party this year? Where was it? Loved the summer parties they did at barking crab, childrens hospital (why'd they do it there anyways lol)

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Poor quality from India has been an issue for Cengage since content was offshored for digitization over a decade ago. Cost more to fix the XML to spec than it was to convert it in the first place. What id--t would move content creation there?

The funny thing is, even before Project Horizon, the in-house SMEs were expected to carefully review all content. So, the SME role didn't change at all. This is just a strategy to get rid of the in-house CMs and transfer their duties to LDs and SMEs officially.

An in-house SME

"All content reviews are being put squarely on the shoulders of the Learning Designers now. So their workload will double, and they'll cover/be responsible for any mistakes made by CPI."

The review work is being put on either in-house SMEs or outside SMEs the product team hires to do reviews. The Content Review Checklists say the LDs are doing "spot check reviews." Plus, they don't have content knowledge to know what they're reading.

"Everybody knows Kentucky is staying. My manager has reassured our Sales Team so many times he is tired of talking about."

My manager participated in my layoff call years ago. A week later, the manager was receiving a layoff call of her own. The moral? Managers know nothing ;)

All content reviews are being put squarely on the shoulders of the Learning Designers now. So their workload will double, and they'll cover/be responsible for any mistakes made by CPI.

Everybody knows Kentucky is staying. My manager has reassured our Sales Team so many times he is tired of talking about. As far as I know we are working from home for as long as we want. People do go in the office if they want. There was a rumor of moving to Mason, Ohio but, there has been no mention recently. As far as I know it is status quo so no layoffs.

Leadership knows the quality is poor and they simply do not care.

A lot of employees raised concerns about the quality of products from India. Looks like we made the correct predictions regarding CPI efficiency, thanks for confirming.

I’m sorry, but if they think wfh is the biggest problem then it’s no wonder the company is in this position. The quality of their hires is poor and has been for a long time.

Also the KY is definitely delulu but that’s what happens when adult employees are treated like high schoolers by their managers/teachers and their principal/vp.

Thread regarding Cengage layoffs

former Manager here

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