Thread regarding Cengage layoffs

@1ph just as much as it’s part of your daily job to come on here and spew fake information and make stuff up. Now, back to McGraw with you…

@13j there you are again! You must spend a good portion of your day on this board. Is this part of your job description to come on and attack people?

@10q hey Mr. everyone is a “bootlicker”, nice to see you continuing to troll from your new job. How’s it going? Where are you, McGraw, noticed that they have been picking up the Cengage trash lately. You may have missed it, but Apollo already took out the trash on the ET, maybe you were one of them? Time to move on and corrupt your new company. Enjoy your severance package, considerate on the house.

@101 a new bootlicker. Or one of the newly arrived failures come to save the day. Lots of downvotes on posts criticising the ET accompanying your post. You’ve ticked that box Monthly OKR achieved. Problem for you Cengage goes through you guys like a hot kn--e through butter. What are you going to do then? Given there’s no IPO to cash out the sinking ship wont do you any good. The ET is going to be culled and along with it your protector (s). Apollo doesn't care about you. They want their money!

@wf “As a previous”, most famous words for this site. Let me sling some mud based on my historical and outdated information. Let me make up stuff and post it here so I feel important and so someone will listen to me. Another useless and tactless post constantly criticizing everyone. When you think everyone else is d-mb or stupid, perhaps take a step back, it’s likely not them? It’s you!

As a previous…. The ET has been a mess the last half dozen years. But reps used to maneuver around the sh---y ET and be very successful despite them. The ET played in their own sh-t, and we did our jobs, made money, maintained relationships…. Etc. It looks like the wheels are coming off the track now and I wish my friends still there would jump! They deserve so much more!

@vp DP doesn’t get called out enough. Anyone that has worked within 10 feet of him knows that he gets ahead by viciously backstabbing anyone he’s threatened by. MH has fallen for his lies, but few others have, including the rest of the ET. They all hate each other and every employee is paying the price for this dysfunction, incompetence, and lack of leadership.

@vp it’s the Cengage way. They are all frauds.

@OP has anyone called out the fraud techy DP? It beggars belief such a pompous blowhard is in charge of product now. How do these frauds slot in at the top?

@tn why?

@tk it did not drive millions in archive sales. It was a nice to have but not a want by any means and customers didn’t want to pay for it. It was an awesome platform to have included in archives though. Both things can be true.

@rj this is wrong on so many levels. The Lab put Gale front and center in humanities in so many ways. The vision that it took ti get it done in the face of people who championed the tired old ways was epic. The Lab drove $ millions in archive sales and for a time created a moat around Gale..Sadly cengage diverted the funding to mindtap and the”game chqnger” cengage unlimited. We all know how that turned out

@qv digital scholar lab was/is given away for free. Doesn’t mean it’s a bad product but it’s a niche product. Hence PG getting the boot. Was never worth what was paid to develop it and surely wasn’t the 2nd coming. Money that could’ve been spent on better things for Gale.

@qh i don't think PG was loathed. The k12 guy sure, but not PG. The “For Educators” debacle that su-ked all the $’s out of the plate budget was a real problem. The Digital Scholar Lab was adopted in over 400 institutions worldwide and drove Archive sales. Cengage ki-led that as they took away all the R&D. Its a long time ago but the Global Academic division was a machine and full of smart ,passionate people . Funny how people forget. Doesn't matter now of course. Funny how people remember totally different things from totally different perspectives!
The pain and mess today is universal though. I wonder how long all this can actually drag on?

@pb i agree it wasnt perfect but I was in the room for some of the meetings and it was pretty clear the Gale ET were doing their best in the face of unreasonable constant pressure from NK/MH and the snake MW. I HEARD them arguing and frankly challenging the Cengage ET. It may have felt like they rolled over but it wasnt the case. Its not just me, i talked to a few people who also cycled in and out of those horrible meetings and they said that the Gale management were fighting the good fight. The problem is, having a backbone gets you fired and thats what happened. The ones that jumped before being fired in that group were the opportunists The ones that stuck it out until the end actually cared about Gale. It made zero differnce in the end I agree,but thats the history of it . I wonder where they all ended up?

@pd They’ve been robbing Peter to pay Paul for years now- hence several years of price hikes. This last reorg was the only thing left to do bc it allowed them to hide the numbers. Had a customer tell me this week they aren’t sure Cengage will even be around in the near future. I agree.

Gale? No one cares about Gale.. that is the least of their problems.

The Executive Team deserves to be down 40 million or more and next year they deserve to be down 150 million to 200 million. Hopefully its a perfect storm and they lose a ton of revenue and all of their pending lawsuits they lose. MH has to GO>>>> and his cronies.

I was on a call this week, and it's becoming painfully obvious that many of the new hires are completely lost. Every aspect of the role seems to be a struggle. They're being pushed out onto campus, but they're not uncovering meaningful opportunities because they're still trying to understand the basics of the job.

Honestly, many of them would be better off spending time learning Salesforce, Highspot, Power BI, territory management, product positioning, and customer workflows. Instead, they're being sent into the field while the company is already facing a massive sales deficit.

At this point, it feels like we're robbing Peter to pay Paul. Maybe it creates a little short-term relief. Maybe it helps the Executive Team avoid even worse numbers by March 31. Maybe they're only down $40 million instead of something much larger.

But what happens next year?

That's the bigger concern. The disruption created by the May reorganization isn't a one-year problem. The losses we're seeing today will continue to ripple through next year's business. We've already lost significant existing business to competitors, and many customer relationships have been damaged by constant turnover, poor service experiences, and ongoing organizational disruption.

Customers across the country are frustrated. Employees are frustrated. New hires are overwhelmed. Experienced employees continue to leave. Yet leadership keeps acting as if another reorganization or another initiative will somehow solve the problems created by the last one.

Look at what we're dealing with today: no company cars, no Tableau, limited access to reliable performance data, aggressive targets, little transparency into the numbers, no historical territory data, incomplete account intelligence, unfilled positions, a constantly changing organizational structure, leaders with little institutional knowledge, inexperienced reps covering massive territories, declining morale, and customers who are tired of being told to work with yet another new contact.

The most frustrating part is that none of these problems existed in isolation. Leadership created many of them through a series of decisions that disrupted both employees and customers at the same time.

At some point, the question stops being, "How do we overcome the latest challenge?" and becomes, "Why are we constantly cleaning up avoidable mistakes?"

That's the conversation more employees are starting to have.

@p3 middle management was awesome. PG and some other ET were not and did Gale zero favors.

They cannot micromanage themselves out of the debacle ! MH is Fake! and NK will be forced to Fall on the sword! Because NK has no one else to blame,,, NK has blane’s them , fired them and now he is the only one sitting at the table! No way Apollo will allow him to blame all of the new leadership hires over the past 18 months.

Hey NK, what’s your mr next move!?! your back is against the wall. No tears or crying allowed!!! little boys cry!!!

@jg I’m a humanities rep covering Gale now. We have no clue what we are doing. Training has been abysmal. We have massive numbers and have no clue what part of it is a Gale number or regular number. HW has not been impressive either and not much help with Gale.

@kz I think calling them fools is a bit much. I’d sure as he-l rather be working under their management than these current clowns. They delivered growth from what I remember despite being bled dry by Cengage. They also struck me as being fairly decent folks. Doesn’t matter anyway as NK and MH smoked them to feed the Cengage machine and support whatever “strategic pivot” they’d thought up at the time. Problem is there have been a plethora of pivots since

@kf yep. It was a great company until Cengage and the PE bled it dry. Well and the Gale leadership at time were fools. But mostly Cengage bleeding it dry. Zero money for investments and zero desire to understand how Gale worked.

@ka wasnt the Gale Academic going great g-ns 4 years ago? They pulled off some gigantic deals that got a lot of high fives. They even sold a sh*t ton in China i remember which I found cool and felt wild as I was sitting in Boston working out ways to sell accounting books in the Midwest.. I guess all those people are long gone. Seems like a long time ago but there were signs of problems even back then across Cengage

@hq Gale had a huge K12 division. As well as Public.

@jg can confirm. And we know our days are numbered because of our higher salaries.

@ja you’d think with the way they realigned that was the case. But no. Gale goals are 11% higher than last year and very much still being sold.

Gale sales is now handled by the humanities high ed reps. Some of the Gale sales people that didn’t get let go were moved into these spots. But it’s been rumored that many are leaving or trying to leave because the compensation and bonus plan is so much less than what they had before.

@ja I think Gale is still around . I still see the occasional LinkedIn blurb once in a while so the brand is hanging around though it’s just another thing for the reps to not sell. I suppose could sell the product list to someone else, but it isn’t a division with dedicated employees anymore, at least I don’t think it is.

@hq I thought Gale already was gutted and effectively ceased to exist? I guess they’re finding out they couldn’t just harvest it. Pity as it threw off a lot of cash and something like $100 million Ebita. Those numbers are a bit old so it probably 4 years out of date or so.
Anyway as I said I figured Gale wasn’t really a factor anymore and I can’t imagine there’s much left to sell!

@h4 I heard anyone left at Gale is being shifted info portfolio management, whatever that means. And is Gale part of K-12 too? Too many reorgs to remember.

Just another example of ineptitude from the ET. Changing logos and sending out meandering vague press releases will surely turn the tide.

@dx they are laying off all the Gale people yet not one person on the HEd side knows how to sell it or who to even meet with in the library. Trying to figure out if they are just going to sell Gale off? Bc otherwise they are totally sc--wed with Gale sales.

@dx they have never stopped since May. A few every month. We are down millions and they are clueless.

just saw a message indicating that a content developer from gale has been laid off. it kind of makes me feel sick knowing that these kinds of silent layoffs are happening in batches throughout the year.

@OP everyone just close “x” amount and we will make it! That’s the plan.

when you talk to him again. let him know this the best soap opera in publishing. ! i have a nice warn blanket. bowl of popcorn , a glass of wine…. and im tuned into the layoffs waiting for the train wreck !

I hear there are a few new departures happening this week. can’t wait to hear who.

@OP more than likely, they start by firing you. May Jesus have mercy on your soul and may the pain you suffer every two weeks collecting a paycheck end quickly. God bless.

Its because NK is truly clueless when it comes to sales and completely ignorant when it comes to Educational publishing sales. I know he was told multiple times, I was in the room when he was directly told not to put the existing business at risk. But he has no experience selling anything, except selling everyone on how he would like to be viewed... but at the end of the day, he is just an immature passive aggressive little boy in over his head.

This last reorg has put 75% of the existing business in play, and the other publishers are winning at historic levels not seen in 7 years. MH and NK have pushed all the talent out the door, and the new inexperienced reps are drowning, but the funny part is they don't have any idea how bad they are doing. This year and next are doomed. I guess NK figures this is his one shot, so why not go for it. But that shot in the dark has failed miserably. The little boy needs to GO!

MH and NK deserve everything coming their way, and we will celebrate their departure.