Thread regarding Cengage layoffs

@aecc+14VW6qmA initials please for vp?

@aecc+14VW6qmA Very well said. I worked in marketing, but a similar attitude permeated senior leadership. Instead of developing and promoting talent, cronies and hacks were elevated. They valued blind loyalty which meant new ideas or even questioning the status quo got you in hot water. Leadership believed they were the masters of the universe and everyone outside the circle should be thankful they have a job. Its this attitude that caused the real talent in the company to slowly trickle out the doors. It also doesn't help that Cengage salaries are at the bottom of the market (I received a 33% pay bump when I left). You combine those two things and end up with a company that talented people don't want to work for.

So that we are all clear, poster #@9fvf+14VW6qmA three posts down from this one is the mid-level RM (now junior VP, I believe) defending his calling underlings "backstabbers and parasites" further below in this conversation.

We parsed your language earlier, let's do it again - because as always you unwittingly display some of the very attitudes and reasons behind the Cengage plummet.

"I was a rep before being other things. I closed hundreds of adoptions, built businesses from scratch, earned each and every promotion and reward ... "

Oh, please - blah blah blah - spare us the high & mighty "back when I was a rep" rap. Yeah you worked hard - most reps still do. Harder, even, today than a couple of decades back because today it is a much harder row to hoe than it was back when gaining a mere roll still yielded a goodly number of sales.

Trust me, I do not defend the four-months-per-year rep post below. That's a pretty low-life attitude but, then again, a better-managed organization would spot such behavior within months, if not weeks, and that kind of thing would be nipped in the bud. The attitude this rep displays and the managerial neglect that allows for such practices (assuming the post was reflective of the truth) is a reflection of the reality within Cengage right now. Rotten leadership and shoddy management practices result in passionless paycheck collectors. In other words - that's on you. Not you alone, but yes - you are a key part of the problem with your cynical attitude toward those who are supposed to be feeding your paycheck and your success. The buck has to stop somewhere, and it ain't at the bottom, that's for sure.

"Do you think other publishers fall in a line to pay you more than they pay their people? No."

As usual, you are wrong there. I will counter with my first-hand experience in this regard. I was a top performer, two goal misses in twenty years, and like everyone else around me I was cut loose and replaced with a recent college grad who was paid $15-20k less than I was making, salary-wise. That person left within a year and what was once my position has now turned over a total of three times in five or six years. Think about that: to save twenty grand per year, Cengage actually invested in the training and development of three different young individuals, only to lose them again within a year or two. I visit my former accounts now and I sometimes walk the bookshelves, counting the number of adoptions I had won and held with Cengage that now belong to competitors. It's insane - the base has just vanished!

Back to competitor interest, my track record with Cengage was noted elsewhere and I was quickly hired at $6000 more than I was making at Cengage when I left. The other company interviewing me offered $4000 more than my last year with Cengage. One of my counterparts, who was unceremoniously dumped a couple of months after my dismissal accepted a post at yet another company at a similar raise in pay. And we were not even sitting in active employment situations at the time of these offers!

What was the rationale behind these offers? Without patting myself on the back too hard, I believe (well actually, I know - because I was told after being hired) that my record spoke for itself and they felt it was worth the greater salary level. They knew that I was going to work my butt off to deliver the same results for them - and guess what? I have. Those continuing results could have belonged to Cengage, as I was pretty happy there for a good long while. But hey - now you guys are saving yourselves a measly five figures per year and the old staying applies in this case, "ya get what ya pay for."

Your statement and attitude is quite typical of Cengage today when it comes to your underpaid, less experienced and frustrated reps: "you're lucky to be getting a paycheck." Upside-down thinking.

"The posts below are by people who have no idea about publishing business."

Again - wrong.

The posts below are from people who have EVERY idea about the publishing business but who unfortunately find themselves working for Cengage. Instead of being well-trained to go out there and talk to Profs about content and satisfying their course needs and relieving their pain points, Cengage reps are tasked with trying to make the broken Mindtap look smooth in presentations and shilling for a price scheme that most every Prof rolls their eyes over. To quote one of my Dept Chairs who had just sat through a Cengage Unlimited group presentation when I asked him for his feedback, "my faculty all agreed, we could all see what was in this for Cengage ... we just couldn't figure out what was in it for us."

No, these people know all about publishing - what it is and what it should be. They just work for an employer who does not.

I know well who you are, mister RM turned junior VP. I've worked with you up close and and I recognize you from afar. You regard those reporting to you with disdain and, in return, you motivate professional practices reflective of that attitude.

Despicable.

To post: @9bqv+14VW6qmA I think Hansen and company did a fair job of smearing Cengage folks, before you go off the handle smearing a few reps...

Agreed @9cyu+14VW6qmA I've met quite a few of these in TX, OK,

You can read the last posts to see where the word backstabber comes from.

I was a rep before being other things. I closed hundreds of adoptions, built businesses from scratch, earned each and every promotion and reward, and frustrated at the bonus caps announced just at the right time after a promotion season. Some of those businesses are still making revenues for you. Did I bill every lunch? Yes, I did. Did the accounts bill every adoption I closed? Yes, they did. How many months does it all take in a year? 12.

Do you think other publishers fall in a line to pay you more than they pay their people? No. They call you to "explore possibilities," ask you interview questions like "What would you do in your first year?" in hopes of free consultancy.

The posts below are by people who have no idea about publishing business.

Regarding the two sales reps saying how they barely work and steal from the company, I imagine now other publishers are now making a ‘Note to Self’ to not hire any sales reps who worked for Cengage.

@8bxw+14VW6qmA Most DM's are clueless trolls who had a good year or two pure (walked into a huge rollover adoption or two) and used that to get promoted. They then spend the next few years doing nothing but pushing paper. Next they either leave for a competitor, are fired or demoted back to being a rep and the cycle starts over. Good on you! Take advantage of it while you can.

Sales rep here, just to let you know @8obx+14VW6qmA I work about 4 months out of the year not 8 and I used to bonus but those days are over. I would use the gift cards that were meant to bribe my profs as gifts for Xmas to family members. My DM was so clueless there were many weeks during the semester I was in Hawaii or the Caribbean and I would just call it in. Publishing is doomed, and I'm still milking it BTW...

Any guesses on who the midlevel manager is described below? Initials? I have an idea, curious if anyone else feels the same.

Signed,
Getting my resume ready, the writing is on the wall

It's pretty simple. Poster ID: @1tdf+14VW6qmA is just your typical d—beat publishing sales person. Working 8-9 months a year, driving a company car, expensing all lunches and collecting a paycheck until they get let go. Can't say that I blame them

8qye+14VW6qmA Well thought out analysis and I agree on every point you've made , except I got the impression the poster was a woman since as a man we are not allowed in corporate America to ever use words like " perky or assets" when referring to women. Only women are allowed to use these words which are forbidden to men and this is why if I were to assign any gender to the poster in this case it would be a "female" in the classical sense pre Bill Nye 'Science era'.

I find it highly amusing and instructive just how Poster ID: @1tdf+14VW6qmA further below in this discussion thread unwittingly demonstrates the massive problems plaguing Cengage middle-management, as well as those (s)he reports to.

In the post, this contributor tells us that (s)he serves as a longer-term middle manager on the sales side of Cengage. Let's parse the language and meaning behind this post:

"I pretty much agree I’ve been here over ten years and have seen many many talented people split a long time ago ... "

• Interesting observation, given that this mid-manager indicates that the talented folks departed long ago, and yet (s)he remains. Not the intended message most certainly, but speaks volumes.

"I would like to leave too but I’m older..."

• Concrete evidence of what most of us reading this realized a long time ago, that Cengage has taken to hiring much younger, much cheaper sales talent (where the associated results are far less than more experienced reps would have delivered), and that the overall perceived value associated with age and experience is quite low within Cengage. Especially interesting as competing PubCos are gobbling up the best and the brightest of sales, marketing and editorial talent that Cengage paid to develop and then cut loose in cost-savings measures over the years.

". . . and it’s more difficult to find a job when I’m competing with perkier younger assets."

Fascinating choice of words. Here the poster reveals to us that he is male. as young men are rarely referred to as perky, and then he chooses to view sales employees as "assets." This word alone makes me feel incredibly grateful that I departed Cengage when I did. Realizing that every company views employee strengths and contributions as "assets" within the collective, such employees are generally regarded and treated as professional human beings. This choice of terminology should be bolded, noted, and featured in headlines on sites like Glassdoor, for it encompasses most precisely the position one accepts when joining the Cengage organization.

". . . However, the many people who remain truly are parasites, backstabbers etc. . . "

Again, fascinating and instructive choice of words given that the poster is one of the "many people who remain" and especially given the second part of this sentence:

". . . and I see a lot of awful awful actors at the DM LEVEL. So happy they answer to me now."

And there we have it, folks. This mid-level grunt of a sales manager views the Cengage District Sales Managers who report to him as "parasites and backstabbers." This may well be true, but it begs several questions:

• if that view is true of the very front-line management directing on-the-ground sales operations, exactly how low is the opinion of the actual perky sales rep assets - er, reps?

• Exactly what chance of being hired does a non-perky male job applicant have when interviewing with this sales "leader"?

• And finally, with exactly how much credence is field information from these parasitical back-stabbers actually being given when fed up the food chain to the actual decision makers?

I recognize this attitude, and I very likely indirectly reported directly to this disagreeable man - or to one very much like him - during the latter years of my tenure within Cengage. This simple little post is representative of the very problems plaguing this once very promising company, and with institutional attitudes unintentionally displayed in this simple little post below, it seems the future of this company is writ large for all who choose to read between the lines.

Despicable.

@5hdp+14VW6qmA Imagine in 2020 needing to go back to ancient history to justify the existence of a no good publisher...

I just had to chuckle at the title of this thread. Anyone who has worked at Cengage for longer than a week should know by now that it is the worst company for any notion of job security.

@5hdp+14VW6qmA The problem is that Cengage is run largely by people with no experience whatsoever in educational publishing before they came to the company. The majority of them have business consulting backgrounds and don't appreciate or understand what sales and product people on the front lines of the company are doing. They focus on trends and solutions from other industries, mostly tech, and crudely paste them into Cengage without any thought into what it means for the customer. That's how you ended up with MindTap and Cengage Unlimited. Not understanding actual higher ed trends is how they missed OER. But if you try and point out what is actually happening with customers and what they actually ask for you are viewed as an out of touch dinosaur. The people underneath the c-level execs who came up in publishing know this which is why they never question any of their ridiculous strategies. Getting ahead at Cengage means going along to get along.

@5hdp+14VW6qmA I gather you worry about your competitor's problems because of previous affiliation. That's fine. Cengage is a name of a business. Individuals make the decisions. The Unlimited model wants to persuade students to influence professors. For a loose analogy, the person who sets it up is like Pericles wanting to take an island or two by popular support. You are like the Spartans. And there is an outbreak again to spice things up like there was in Athens. It is hard to imagine an academic policy dictated by students so it will probably not work. The person who is going to manage the reverse has some PR work to do.

"Honestly, the recipe for success in higher education publishing has never changed: produce high-quality, compelling content; set fair price levels & offer a variety of delivery options, and; provide high-touch, quality representation out in the field on the sales, marketing & editorial fronts."

Literally none of those things are a priority at Cengage right now.

@4cie+14VW6qmA Certainly, most every textbook publisher wants, needs & usually has a robust digital offering to compete & thrive in today's environment. With the Cengage approach however, the devil is most definitely in the details:

You don't artificially jack up the cost of a new AAA print title to sky-high prices to dissuade or prevent students who want print to buy print. That leaves money on the table and absolutely k–ls your reputation in the market place.

You also don't start charging premium prices for an eBook. Last school year, a single eBook through Cengage Unlimited cost a student $120. That is insane.

Building wildly complex, confusing and often broken digital learning systems is generally a bad idea. something like MindTap replicates the LMS most every school already has in place and no one - no prof and certainly no student - wants to pour in the hours required to learn how to use bells & whistles they will never need or use.

Most importantly, do not confuse Unlimited with the concept of digital. Unlimited is a pricing scheme - and a stupid, ill-considered one, at that. The very concept of Unlimited is guaranteed to send revenues plummeting: suddenly a student enrolled in two Cengage-adopted courses is paying for only one. Instant revenue loss from that student.

The bet Cengage made is that the notion of a Netflix type pricing scheme would be instantly appealing to profs, one and all, and that people would flock to adopt Cengage because they have a subscription. The new, added numbers would outweigh the lost revenue-per-student. This is at complete odds with the way profs make adoption decisions, where cost is always a concern but very rarely the only one, so the idea flopped.

I work for a competitor, one currently grabbing hands-full of Cengage base right and left, after having spent a couple of decades with Cengage. Within our company, we were pretty sure Unlimited would fail based on the above logic points and more, but we did have a subscription plan in place for quick roll-out in case it turned out to be a game-changer. It was not.

Honestly, the recipe for success in higher education publishing has never changed: produce high-quality, compelling content; set fair price levels & offer a variety of delivery options, and; provide high-touch, quality representation out in the field on the sales, marketing & editorial fronts.

Even with digital delivery in the picture, it is really that simple.

I find it hilarious that cengage people even believe there's any job security whatsoever. Just proof the brightest bulbs in the box have already left this filthy old dump...

The "Netflix for textbooks" tagline was invented in 2009. The original concept was to offer part of the backlist on low-cost subscription with the front list single titles as top-up purchase at a discounted price for subscribers. The rationale was to overcome the business volatility after the credit crunch and to respond to the "e-books are supposed to be cheap" expectations those days. The idea was revisited in discussions for a couple of years. Eventually the decision was to supply single pdf books through aggregator platforms.

Interesting comments regarding Cengage Unlimited, but doesn’t explain why the other major educational publishers are also moving away from traditional print and towards similar digital models. Can every one of them have the same disconnect with the college market?

@3iot+14VW6qmA I fully agree with everything you wrote and don't intend to let Hansen off the hook. But make no mistake, Hansen is only there to do private equity's bidding. My guess is he was ordered to make a dramatic shift in strategy to boost the company's perceived value, which led to the half-baked Unlimited scheme. Think about it...when Unlimited was publicly unveiled the marketing was touting it as "Netflix for textbooks." That was the tagline for it in every single interview and press release. That wasn't an accident as Cengage has desperately wanted outside investors to view it as the next tech innovator. Michael and private equity were hoping that Unlimited would propel the company into becoming the next speculative tech company like Uber or WeWork and hoped that would lead to outside investment and an outsized valuation. That obviously didn't materialize and Cengage is stuck with another loser product and business strategy. But I think Michael and upper management knew that the revenue wouldn't work from the beginning. They were just hoping they could spin it with smoke and mirrors until outside investors came to the rescue a la Tesla and Uber. Again, none of this has to do with creating a healthy company in the long term....its all about inflating value and filling PE's pockets.

While the private equity ownership is certainly not acting with the company's long-term health in mind, I must say that a goodly amount of blame or responsibility lays at the feet of Michael Hansen and the leadership behind the Unlimited pricing scheme.

Hansen has always seemed to operate in a way that was shockingly disconnected with the marketplace, and Unlimited was no exception.

For years under Hansen's rule, Cengage led the market in terms of print pricing. The company was the first to charge $3-400 for a print textbook and that practice has deliberately continued to this day, in a misguided attempt to force faculty & students to "go digital" when they simply did not want to.

Print sales cratered as a result, so the Unlimited scheme was hatched. Unlimited was an attractive option when stacked up against the $300 hard copy alternative, but $120 for an eBook is ridiculous. Unlimited was a price play - it devalued the one thing of value Cengage owns, which is content - and turned that singular thing of value into a commodity.

Unlimited also assumed that cost was THE overriding factor in an adoption decision, when in fact it was only one of several considerations. The very idea that, say, a Chem Chair was going to call across campus to the English Department Chair and say "hey! let's both adopt Cengage!" because of Unlimited was simply ridiculous. Outside of privately-owned Career Colleges, Higher Education simply does not work in this way.

Unlimited was an ill-considered solution to a problem of Cengage leadership's own creation and it was entirely at odds with the reality on the ground out in the marketplace. The end result was predictable and one that would have been foreseen by better leadership: the decline in revenue and in reputation as well.

@3kzx+14VW6qmA The correct answer is private equity. In addition to everything outlined below, they have forced the company to go into further debt for stock buybacks and dividends (i.e. payouts for ownership) in down years. And now that a private equity owner is running the company you can count the exec team too.

Just curious. Who are the parasites? The exec team or middle management or both?

The layoffs continue and are now getting to the very deepest core of the main US operations . All depts. and shifts. Nothing being mentioned of our South American or Ukraine Assets. As far as losses.
Probably transitioning all to oversea operations. Prior to merger, we were fed a lot of misleading information. Promised acquisitions either full or partial. Promised IPO. Discarded fulfilling their misleading information ideas and went straight for THE MERGER IDEA which was also intentionally misleading. BOTH MERGER COMPANIES were OWENED BY PRIVATE EQUITY companies which were related. Just as Thompson Corp.’s Family owned EVERGREEN PRIVATE EQUITY company’s relationships. Just follow the paper trails for the truth. Prior and during the merger talks, examine what the other company was doing with their assets with centralization, as well as constant product announcements on their sites. Business as usual. We stalled and made ourselves stale.

In the ‘merger plans cancelled’ thread someone hoped that they would at least get a severance package. Yes, it’s called unemployment checks.

@1dfh+14VW6qmA Yeah, its unnecessary. Most of us work here because we like our coworkers....lord knows there isn't much else to hang your hat on these days. Senior leadership are the parasites who got us here.

I’m thinking the comment about ‘parasites and backstabbers’ and ‘there will be no severances’ came from someone bitter person whose a– was kicked to the curb.

@1icp+14VW6qmA We are going through our 2nd round of private equity pain, and this round could be the final blow for the company. The first was when Apax acquired us in 2007. Prior to that, Cengage (formerly Thomson Learning) was a fairly stable, decent place to work. Not perfect, but a far cry from what we have to deal with today. That all changed when Thomson sold us to Apax. It's funny, because I remember our VP telling us we had nothing to worry about. "They think they can grow the company, and then will probably get their investment back through an IPO in 2-3 years." Haha....could not have been further from the truth and he ended up being one of the first to go. Instead of growing the company's revenues and staff shrunk every year all while Apax dumped more debt on our balance sheet from acquisitions intended to boost our market valuation. That led us to bankruptcy. Bankruptcy should have strengthened us with less debt to service, but we were still owned by private equity....just a different name this time (KKR). The strategy was the same. Dump more debt on our balance sheet and cut the staff to boost profitability. They thought they finally had a way out with the merger, but that blew up in their face. So now its back to cuts and debt. That will continue until they can sell us. If they can't do that, we'll keep borrowing until we are down to our last dime and have to shut our doors permanently. A liquidation would be nothing more than a tax write off to KKR because its our debt, not theirs. They are vultures. And now one of the vultures is on our executive suite in full control of day to day decision making. Trust me when I say it is going to get worse. Much worse.

Does anyone left actually think they will get out of there alive?

Take a look at Hertz. Owned by private equity, massive amounts of debt. Sound familiar? They may be forced to liquidate in a week. With private equity, you live by the sword and die by the sword. The sword is falling now and it is going to be very...very ugly.

We can only speculate, but the private equity owners wanted the merger for a reason. I can’t imagine they’re going to forget everything and just let us go back to operating how we were. They buy into companies to make a profit and sell out, and we’re not very attractive to potential buyers right now. I think the new COO is going to make cuts that are extremely deep and painful. With revenues continuing to decline its the only way to boost profitability in the short term. I don’t see anyone being safe.

Let's be clear. The truly intelligent and ambitious people have already left Cengage a long time ago. The parasites and backstabbers who remain, deserve each other and deserve their miserable fate. Yes, it will be layoffs and furloughs and there will not be severances.