Great products and great people, awful upper management - Anonymous employee Cognizant Employee Review

2.0
Oct 26, 2013
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

There are some truly great people working in the trenches. Some of the products, like CareAdvance, have a chance to actually change how healthcare is provided in America, if they can get off the ground. The Boston office's management has an understanding of work/life balance, and they have embraced the unlimited vacation policy as something that can help people not get burned out, unlike other offices.

Cons

Unfortunately, upper management turns over about every year or so, and direction changes allow the worst of the upper and middle managers to just go from one department to another, so nothing really actually changes. There's no translation between grandiose plans and actual execution. The new CEO seems to have a better sense of planning, but given how long anyone stays in charge, the board is likely to have someone new in within a year. The company is owned by a private equity firm that does not care about the actual products, only about how much they'll be able to sell Trizetto for when they decide to do that. As a healthcare company, it has the absolute worst healthcare benefits package I've ever seen. Even the new packages announced for 2014 are bad, at an increase in premiums of between 7 and 24% depending on your salary and the type of plan. The new PPO option is a high deductible plan too. Depending on where you work there may be lots of career opportunities or none. Basically, that means if you're in Denver, you can advance. If you're not, you won't. There was a huge push to build a single culture under the previous CEO, but his methods involved taking the worst things from the corporate office (like dress code and restrictive policies on working from home) and making them mandatory everywhere.

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Pros

Good learning opportunities and structured training

Cons

Limited pay growth and slow promotions

1.0
Jun 5, 2026
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CEO approval
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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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