Great Company Leading the Disruption of a MAJOR Industry - Software Engineer Cengage Employee Review

5.0
24 Sept 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Management is very open to feedback and the company overall is very transparent about things. Cengage is in the midst of a merger with McGraw Hill and it is never difficult to get questions answered about this. The tech stack is very current with industry standards (Jenkins CI/CD pipelines, TDD, React.js & React Native, Microservices architecture...etc). This is a great place to gain experience early in your career and learn from some great engineers. Plenty of opportunity for more senior roles as well! Free lunch and company wide information sharing session every other Wednesday. They fly all new hires to the HQ in Boston for three days and you get to explore the city while receiving an interactive orientation program from leadership and HR. This is generally 1-3 months after you start. The company is always looking to be candid and find ways to improve. You can generally work remotely when you need to which is super helpful. Coming from an Automotive company in the Detroit area, this company is a breath of fresh air. Things move very quickly with very little bureaucracy. The office is very laid back and many people dress down so you should feel comfortable in whatever you choose to wear to work.

Cons

Pay could be a bit more competitive in certain regions. I was only able to negotiate up to $85,000 base with a $4k sign-on bonus in the Farmington Hills, MI office having 2 years of experience. Was given excuses about internal equity as the reason the base salary could not be higher. This is decent and definitely not underpaid, but other companies in the Detroit area are a bit more competitive.

Explore other reviews about Cengage

5.0
28 Mar 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Total rewards, time off, great people and culture

Cons

Lots of changes and uncertainty at times

3.0
4 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Company has some interesting approaches to the market and in the past they seemed value employees. There are some good employees there and there was, in the past, visionary leadership, but the people with the vision and leadership skills left the company a few years ago.

Cons

The company actively de-values employees. They had a project they called "Project Horizon" where they told all employees they needed to cut costs, so the company was going to have multiple layoffs over 3-5 years - but nobody was allowed to know when, where, or why - - just one day large swaths of people would be gone. That hung over everyone's heads - for years, and is indicative of how Cengage values employees - it doesn't. Everything is about trying to secure new funding and prepare for an IPO, so they stopped investing significantly in the products about 3 years ago and that's about when they stopped acting like they cared about employee wellness as well.

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