Pros
Very fast-paced, incentivizes employees to bring new ideas and think outside the box with solutions that will address the client's most complex problems. Most of the big brand names across all industry verticals are Cognizant's clients, so there's a lot of opportunity to work with those companies and learn about their different business models as you deliver Cognizant's services. It's exciting!
Cons
Most of the company still thinks about selling IT services as doing "body shopping". It's all about defining a very cheap hourly rate card with an ideal resource pyramid. Not solutions-focused, but still focused on putting as many people on a project as possible without taking any project risks. In 2 years I haven't seen 1 single org chart on paper/word/ppt. It's all very fluid and you can only get stuff done if you build relationships. This seems to be by design, because if you do something not exactly by the book and it fails, no one can blame you as you were doing what you thought was right. The problem on building relationships is that if you're not part of the same Indian culture, it's much harder due to the lack of common cultural interests. Sometimes you feel like an outcast. Even though Cognizant is a US company (listed in the NYSE and headquartered in Teaneck, NJ), it is completely run by the leadership in India (Chennai). The employees in the US are merely the link/conduit/spokespeople of the strategy and direction defined in India and the clients in the US. Many of US-based employees (myself included) are led to believe this is not the case and we should drive strategy due to our proximity with the client. However, in practicality, India runs the show. Which generates a lot of conflict across the US and India (onsite/offshore). Lastly, too many chefs in the kitchen. Due to this lack of clarity/ambiguity on ownership in the leadership positions, each leader has his/her own agendas and takes his team in a specific direction. Then that changes very quickly, causing a lot of rework. Not efficient at all.