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

2.0
26 Oct 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.

Explore other reviews about Cognizant

5.0
27 May 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
17 June 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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