Thread regarding Cengage layoffs

As long as this company continues to promote the inexperienced and unqualified in leadership roles, its future is doomed.

Drinking the kool-aid and spewing the company jargon in every meeting with your direct reports and executive leadership instead of talking on their level and really listening to what they have to say to understand what's going on? You'll get promoted.

Worried about low-priority, high-visibility tasks that you can tell executive leadership about when your reports spend precious hours to complete them, instead of tackling the real work? You'll get promoted.

No people skills, but can manage your work like a robot, using that cold, unfeeling persona with a knack to write long-a– emails that would put the length and complexity of "Anna Karenina" to shame? You'll get promoted.

Memorized the credo like it's your mother's birthday and keeping a fresh version of it as the screensaver of your desktop? You'll get promoted.

Far, too many people within this company have no business in the leadership roles they are in. Are they good workers? Sure. Should they be 'leaders'? Well, look at the state of the company and ask that question again. Don't just look at your direct manager, look above them. Look higher. Look at the tippity top of the flowchart. Is your Director qualified to manage your group? Is your VP? CEO? Ask yourself how they got there. Who did they 'know'? Did they truly earn their positions or did they just have that k–ler smile, get-it-done personality with absolutely no skill to lead? Maybe they slept with their managers at one time - old fashioned but still happens. It has happened here. Maybe somebody took them under their wing, thinking they were the next big thing, only to promote them and leave the company, (get pushed out), leaving the rest of us to have to 'deal' with the fallout of a very poor decision to promote somebody inept to lead.

Just because you're good and managing work, writing emails, and spewing the company jargon does not mean you're good to lead a company. Just because you don't have a life and put in a sixteen hour day, doesn't mean you're management material. Just because you have the executive leadership's mantra burned in your brain and read all the current leadership books on Amazon doesn't mean you're right or fit to run this company, let alone, a team of people.

Until this company's real leaders (are there any?) look down the chain and realize that there are far too many yes-men and yes-women (especially the latter) that don't know a thing about leading people and leading a company, this company is doomed. Again, how can you lead when you don't have the experience because either you were promoted too soon or shouldn't have been promoted at all?

If you want to stay with this company, make change. Make noise. Point out the fakers in your leadership. Stop taking this lying down. Too many people in the wrong roles are driving this company to the brink of failure. It quite possibly may be too late, but if you want your job at least a little bit longer, stop being complacent with the lack of experience your leadership has and ask, "should you be leading this company?" While you're at it, as yourself, "should they be my manager?"

Or you, yourself, can continue to drink the kool-aid and taking the beatings. Oh, look out, there's another email in your in-box from your Director... better grab a drink, this one looks longer than this morning's email from her...

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| 3160 views | | 24 replies (last July 23, 2020) | Reply
Post ID: @OP+15XzxIO1

24 replies (most recent on top)

@8ums+15XzxIO1 This person gets it. Not any amount of complaining, change initiatives, layoffs, cost savings actions, territory switches, bonus restructuring, management reorgs, or even mergers will change the fact that few people want to buy traditional textbooks and that even fewer people want to buy a product like MindTap. Don’t believe the hype: you aren’t changing the world; Cengage isn’t disrupting the education space; you aren’t on the right side of history. These are all stories—“battlecries”, to use a favorite marketing term—you’re being told in order to keep your morale up and to motivate you to work extremely hard for below-industry-average pay. HED publishing as an entire industry is in very serious trouble, and the company relies on this positive internal messaging to keep its employees from admitting and acting on that fact.

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Post ID: @8csh+15XzxIO1

What you really need are products that people actually want to purchase.

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Post ID: @8ums+15XzxIO1

The worst thing for me about working here is the way I've been reduced to working so hard to achieve mediocrity because that's all that's possible in this absurd place. If you think there's anything good here, you need to get out more. (OK they're handling covid well.) All the bright ideas, all the reorgs, all the sugary internal PR ... we just need tools, procedures, workflows and TECHNOLOGY that actually works. And some good management wouldn't hurt.

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Post ID: @7scd+15XzxIO1

So very glad I was downsized. Am at a much better place now. The dumpster that this place was - s—ed the enthusiasm out of me.

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Post ID: @7elh+15XzxIO1

@5ubp+15XzxIO1 Its always been something ridiculous. Back in the day it was voicemails from the National Sales Manager intended to motivate. No one cared. Or they played the game.

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Post ID: @5ywh+15XzxIO1

@5ubp+15XzxIO1 Because employee morale has bottomed out and they know it. They are trying to convince the minions that Cengage is a wonderful place to work and that management cares about them.

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Post ID: @5eyp+15XzxIO1

Perfect example: management was all about posting daily on Yammer ... Post pictures from campus, blah blah blah. Every manager pushed thia c-ap. Yammer is internal only. So stupid. I could understand a push to post on LinkedIn or some customer facing site, but for internal employees only? WTF is the point? It's like do whatever makes us look good to our peers. Ridiculous waste of time.

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Post ID: @5ubp+15XzxIO1

Q: Are we not men?

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Post ID: @5vuh+15XzxIO1

The 2 guys in a box are not men.

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Post ID: @5cjf+15XzxIO1

Don’t get all the comments about women screwing up the business. The executive team is, and always has been, made up of men. The person who took us down the path of Cengage Unlimited is a man.

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Post ID: @4chx+15XzxIO1

ID: @3cmv+15XzxIO1 True, it’s another example of ‘make-work’ tasks, busy work invented to justify someone’s job like working through Magellan for hours because someone created a new meaningless box to be checked. You won’t find this wastefulness and inefficiency in male dominated industries.

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Post ID: @3fgx+15XzxIO1

Because at their level, it is "play business." Kind of like Monopoly. It's not real.

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Post ID: @3cmv+15XzxIO1

The worst is having to endure countless zooms with robotic females all speaking in the kardashian growl or the California Upspeak. Never in my life have I witnessed so many brain dead clones all mimicking each other with none of them having any knowledge of the words they’re parroting. They need to go away. Embarassing.

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Post ID: @2vfx+15XzxIO1

If you're not drinking the kool aid and see this company for what it is I don't understand what you are still doing there. Its beyond clear Michael is going nowhere and is doubling down on failed strategies and reorging and cutting their way to profitability. The sycophants always brush off your concerns with "well this is an organization that embraces change." Get out while you can.

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Post ID: @2nhg+15XzxIO1

At this point, most people who have been in publishing for any time are hanging on for dear life or have been kicked to the curb and are bouncing from dead-end job to dead-end job trying to make ends meet.

The rest have formed their own "consulting companies" meaning they have no work but at least write their home office, mileage, a few meals and a trip or two off their taxes.

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Post ID: @2kyk+15XzxIO1

Post ID: @1jav+15XzxIO1 What’s first Friday?

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Post ID: @2era+15XzxIO1

The statement about the problem of incompetent, female leadership is spot on. They can’t handle it. Maybe they think, (that’s a laugh) that they have to be more male than a male. Like you said, nothing will change until the hangers-on are replaced.

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Post ID: @1tdo+15XzxIO1

Agree 100%. Just look at Management Services.

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Post ID: @1pbt+15XzxIO1

The sycophants posting in first-Friday are so effing annoying

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Post ID: @1jav+15XzxIO1

While it is true, no company wants a person who fights the CEO, the person who stated, "it’s more comforting to the ego", must not work for Cengage. Promotions are not-a-plenty and those who do get promoted are typically the wrong person for the job. Too many times we've seen the right people get looked over - people with experience, people with tenure, people who actually care about leading people. Generally, the right people get looked over by people who said all the right things in meetings and had that 'look at me' methodology... the ones who laughed at top leadership jokes in meetings and the ones who made sure to be the first to ask the questions at the town hall... we see you... we know what you're about... while we may not all want to manage - and are happy to be the workers that do the work - we see your game. It's quite laughable and sickening at the same time.

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Post ID: @eew+15XzxIO1

The alternative to this recipe for success is being placed on “the list” for the next culling

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Post ID: @hys+15XzxIO1

Sure, it’s more comforting to the ego to say the only reason you’ve not been promoted is because you’re not a ‘kiss up’. But the truth is, people tend to be promoted because they have proven themselves valued contributors who’ve helped their teams implement the plans upper management is paid to decide. No company wants to promote employees who fight the CEO’s decisions every step of the way.

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Post ID: @tgy+15XzxIO1

My underarms are perspiring

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Post ID: @czx+15XzxIO1

Bravo!

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Post ID: @qdc+15XzxIO1

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