Glad to be gone - Anonymous employee Cognizant Employee Review

3.0
Jun 18, 2013
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Unlimited PTO - Casual dress environment

Cons

- Unlimited PTO. It sounds great on paper, but your time off (both when and how much) is regulated by management. Instead of being secure that you can take time off that you've earned, you're monitored and made to feel guilty. - Lack of camaraderie. Don't expect to go out for drinks after work or have lunch together. Depending on your manager, you may even have to get permission to participate in things like potlucks during the day. - Lack of direction from upper management. Even though we had pretty aggressive team initiatives, we never had a clear understanding of how the work we were doing fit into the overall goals of the company. This resulted in a lot of confusion and projects stretching out far longer than they should have. - Upper management was completely out of touch. Direct managers knew what was going on in the department but didn't have any real power. Upper management was clueless and made decisions that were not in the best interest of the company or the department. - Confusing internal processes and policies: multiple IT systems, no admin privileges on your machine, multiple passwords to manage. Very corporate. - Confusing bonus structure. After an hour long meeting explaining the bonus structure and the payout amounts, people still didn't understand and just resigned themselves to accepting whatever they got. - No clear communication about raises or promotions. Raises usually come around sometime between January and April. By June there was still no communication about whether or not there would be raises for the year. Most of the time, it felt like the product teams were completely siloed from each other. Teams working on the same floor were unaware of the other's processes or work. There was absolutely no collaboration between teams or departments. If you want to innovate within your role, this is not the company for you.

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5.0
Jul 8, 2026
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Pros

Variety of technology stack and project and lot of learning options.

Cons

Limited remort working oppertunity around.

1.0
Jun 5, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

A potential inroad into large client companies (Leave Cognizant ASAP) You aren't unemployed.

Cons

It's a body shop. Clients will view you accordingly. Contractors cannot be trusted with most tasks. You must be siloed (No room for growth) so you don't break anything. Your actual job is to fulfill gaps in the client's grunt work even if out of scope. If you don't, the hammer falls from client and Cognizant. Wages well below industry standards. 1% annual raises only exist because legally they must exist. Takes full advantage of H-1B slave system, where employees' families and homes will be thrown into a furnace if you aren't keeping Cognizant happy no matter what. Employees are complacent in their slavery. Management is just happy to get their extra crumbs and will reinforce the bad culture. C-suite is opaque. If you are familiar with India's caste system you will understand how "lessers" are treated. This also happens in a literal sense, you aren't totally safe just because you are the favored skin tone. Takes full advantage of modern white collar culture. "Your racist actions aren't actually racist if you aren't Caucasian." Expect the uphill battle to be even more steep if you're not Southeast Asian. You will hunt for your own work most of the time. Cognizant is not helpful in any regard. They exist to skim off the top and nothing else.

3
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