I can't stress enough what a truly toxic culture exists at Cognizant. During my short-lived stint at this hellish place, I witnessed corruption, intimidation and willful neglect by Cognizant team members and the leadership team. I was instructed on a routine basis to falsify my time recording to give the appearance that we were providing the contracted level of support with clients regardless of the amount of time we actually spent working on those accounts. So, if Client A was paying for .5 FTE then, no matter what, you recorded 20 hours for that client.
Speaking of clients - of the 4 major accounts I supported, I guarantee none of them realized that contract obligations were not being met or were not being done to the letter of the contract. Many projects required the resources to be in the US but more often than not, they were actually in India or Canada. Most Indian employees in the US would run into Visa issues and end up moving to Canada for the remainder of the project.
Standard problem resolution was often ignored and what could have been a minor issue would routinely turn into an escalation/crisis because leaders would not make timely decisions or provide necessary approvals. For example, any communication to a client would typically require legal, privacy and senior director approval before it could be delivered. The idea was to ensure that only the absolute minimum information was to be provided out of fear of lawsuits or losing business. Never admit wrongdoing, fudge the impact and outright lie about the remediation efforts.
There is no work-life balance - as countless others have mentioned, you were expected to be available 24/7, which really wasn't hard considering senior managers only got 12 vacation days a year. If you have team members in India then expect to be on calls at all hours of the night to meet client obligations.
Disorganized is too kind a word for Cognizant. It's a trainwreck - imagine traveling to a remote location to conduct work only to find out the location you were sent to had, a) no idea you were coming and b) none of the services or client support resources that were listed as being at that location. This was a routine occurrence.
Finally - there is such a high turnover and general disdain for the organization that it is nearly impossible to forge any partnerships or build a rapport with your department. No culture, no conversations, no interest in co-workers. It was a miserable existence. I'm thankful I got out before it ruined the rest of my career.
