Poorly managed organization in a good industry - Software Engineer Cognizant Employee Review

1.0
Aug 26, 2011
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

downtown boston location health care industry

Cons

Out-of-date architechure that is hard to maintain and cause a lot of customer complaints. Should've re-designed the entire thing from scratch instead of constantly putting band-aids on a platform that is more than 10 years old. The company is now in the hands of a private equity firm. Senior management seems more willing to cutting costs than allocatiing capital to R&D to develop truly innovative solutions for customers. As a result, it is no surprise that there is more and more outsourcing, but less and less investments in on-shore employees. It's ironic that this is a health-care company, yet its employees receive very poor health-care benefits. Some low level front-line managers come from a relatively strong technical background, but they just don't know how to manage. They often have unrealistic expectation of their direct reports. On one hand, they claim to support work/life balance; on the other, the assignments they give are impossible to complete with regular 8-5 schedule. Even if the assignment is complete with overtime effort, no credit is given since the manager now will complain about the quality. Unfortunately, eventually, these managers still get promoted while their reports get laid off or fired. And these now higher level managers will again hire lower level managers similar to them who don't know how to manage. With years passing by, this is ingrained into the culture and very difficult to change.

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5.0
May 27, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good projects, challenging work, lots to learn

Cons

The way the bench status is structured

1
3.0
Jun 17, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Cognizant can be a great place to work at. You have to be self-motivated and driven. You won't often be given a script on how to do your job well. But if you are willing to search for new opportunities, you will find success.

Cons

Just like many other tech companies, layoffs are happening all the time. This often brings many projects to a complete halt. Management never communicates when someone is laid off. And when they are laid off, they often never back fill positions, leaving existing team members working the equivalent of three jobs at once. Most teams there are skeleton crews, ensuring that they cannot reach their full potential.

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