Thread regarding Cengage layoffs

@4lga+16sRVVMp. The Higher Ed marketplace is dead.

• Supposed "customers" i.e. professors actively work against us. They take our free stuff and then could not care less if students actually buy the product.
• True customers, i.e. students, literally despise us. And would walk 10 miles through driving snow to avoid buying one of our products.
• Bulk purchasers i.e. career schools or non-profit enterprise deals use us as profit centers, meaning they negotiate us down to the point of nothing and then charge students double the price they bought it from us.

Someone name me one trend, financial or demographic that is moving in a positive direction. And dont give me this silliness about the need for learning all over the globe.

@4lga+16sRVVMp So very true. Many investor presentations are smoke and mirror shows, but I have never seen any as breathtakingly empty and misleading as Cengage's. Most companies can at least come up with one drummed up financial metric to show progress. "Digital activations" isn't even a financial measure and is useless unless you can show that the growth is incremental which they have yet to do. The fact that revenue continues to decline while activations go up signals that students who were previously buying new books are just trading down for cheaper CU subscriptions. None of the analysts on the calls ever question this trend that a first year finance major could sniff out.

The students who were buying used, pirating or using no textbook will continue to do so. The truth is they are the smart ones, yet we continue to think our customers are s—ers.

The smoke and mirrors show of the quarterly updates are just incredible. A rep would be fired if they were asked to give an overview of their territory and said “my revenue is down by double digits but my digital activations are up 50 percent and lead my competitors significantly.” “Plus I’m saving tons of t&e money due to the fact I’m not driving to campus. “

And the script he reads from sounds like a MBA wanna be. “Decisive actions.” Bawhahahahaha.

I love how all these CEOs who run around preaching “no excuses” are doing nothing but making excuses and blaming COVID for everything.

Digital activations do not pay bills. Revenue does.

Virtue signaling does not pay bills. Revenue does.

Communication and your beloved transparency does not pay bills. Revenue does.

What a freaking joke. Cengage was in serious trouble long before anyone knew what COVID was. As someone else pointed out, Hansen has been CEO since 2012 and has overseen a long, slow decline since then. Aside from a handful of outliers, Cengage revenue has declined every single quarter since he's taken over. Every single quarter. He's laid off countless numbers of employees and closed entire offices, while other offices are now so empty from layoff after layoff that they lease out their excess space to other companies. And what is there to show for all of this? Nothing but failure - year after year. Yet you continue to buy into "changing the status quo." Well guess what, Hansen IS the status quo. He's the one who has overseen failure after failure. He's the one who raised textbook prices, then charged exorbitant prices for his vaporware products like MindTap until he had no choice but to flail towards CU in order to save his job. But you continue to take your 1% merit raise and no bonus like a good boy because you work for a mission based company, right? You don't mind being severely underpaid compared to the market because we're saving students billions, right? YOU are the problem.

Wonder why someone so happy and secure would be trolling this site and posting comments... Hmmm.

Never experienced this level of communication? Really? Guess you never got the line from your boss that your merit raise couldn’t be more because you were at the top of the pay scale for your job. But no one ever could see those supposed pay scales. My boss complained about this happening to him, and then pulled out that old gem for my annual review.

Hansen has been CEO since 2012, long before COVID. I think people are just sick of the constant reorganizations and layoffs going back to 2012. There’s always some sort of new justification for the low raises and reorganizations. At some point, the executive team is responsible for the direction of the company. Employees are burnt out and use this site to vent.

I am happy at Cengage. No business is in great shape right now, unless you work for the companies that make Clorox or vaccines... please show me a company that hasn't laid a ton of people off and/or issued paycuts around COVID. How many companies are making that permanent? Being transparent and committing not only to restoring pay, but telling us exactly WHEN it will be restored? Or offering the opportunity to earn that money back?

I've worked a lot of places and have never experienced the level of communication we receive from our leaders anywhere else. Whether you think leaders are being genuine or not can only be proved or disproved with time; so far they've been true to their word. Those saying the paycuts won't be restored in October like they say: we will find out soon enough.

And yes, educational publishing as an industry is challenging right now, but at least Cengage is facing those challenges head on and trying to address the issues, as opposed to our competitors who are sticking their heads in the sand and trying to survive with the status quo. Of course the waters are choppy right now. Change is hard. Stop whining about it. If you have better ideas, then by all means, please share.

All of you complaining about it: get off your duffs and get another job at a better company if this one is so bad. Unless you are an id–t, you got into educational publishing KNOWING it was challenging and KNOWING it was a lower paying industry, so complaining that you find yourself in exactly that situation is stupid - its no one's fault but YOUR OWN. If it's so awful, move along already.

Not. At. All. When my paycheck had to go towards a Ford Fusion, then later was cut, my bonus is still TBD if I’ll actually get it. Is this honestly how a company can run a business? How is it right? Get me the F out of here. Summer is over, I just don’t have it in me to pretend to care. Even if we can’t be on campus, the pressure and demands is ludicrous. I rode the wave, and now I can see it crashing down. Quickly.

They can spin the subscription increases all they want but the headline is really that every segment of the business was down moderately to significantly in terms of revenue year over year. Every single segment. It doesn’t matter if the subscriptions increase by 10,000%, if the revenue isn’t there to offset the losses in print and ebook sales it’s a loser.

The March-June qtr is irrelevant. July-Sept is all that matters and they predicted a 10-15 percent decline in revenue. (Just look at the slide deck. ) We aren’t getting our pay cuts back. Not a chance. And a double digit decline in revenue with have to be off set with personnel cuts. There is no where else to find $$$.

The March-June qtr is irrelevant. July-Sept is all that matters and they predicted a 10-15 percent decline in revenue. (Just look at the slide deck. ) We aren’t getting our pay cuts back. Not a chance. And a double digit decline in revenue with have to be off set with personnel cuts. There is no where else to find $$$.

Transferable skills. Highlight them on your resume and get the eff out of publishing.

If we really had such a great quarter why aren’t our pay cuts being restored? I hate working here. Dishonest leadership.