Pros

It was good when I joined 6 years back but current management is screwing reputation.
Process Green Card
High onsite oppurtunities and no rotation policy

Cons

Client is everything, employee is nothing
Poor Pay, Hike, Recognition, Promotion
Make you work like Slaves
Extended work hours and unreasonable compensation
Middle management is very bad

Advice to Senior Management

You need a revolution in work culture. concentrate on employee satisfaction also. We need hike and promotion, some motivation to produce quality deliverable. At this rate, your performance would go down soon.

Pros

Excellent Knowledge Management framework in place.

Middle management guys are a joy to work with, feels that you are working with a group of friends.

Opportunity to learn new technologies, if you are upto it.

Cons

Salary is too low,as compared to guys working in other firms with same work exp.

You are treated as a resource to complete the project & there is hardly any value addition to your profile, unless you fight for it.

Promotion is only for those guys who lick their Manager's ass.
The work force managers, are nothing but hell personified. The moment you are released to bench, you are asked to get transferred to Chennai, irrespective of your personal commitments.

Onsite oppportunities are limited to employees working in Chennai & Pune.

Preferential treatment to lateral joiness rather than employees who stick with the firm for years.

Too much South Indian influence.
Majority of promotions & salary hikes, onsite opportunities are given to South Indians.

Advice to Senior Management

Give preference to people who stick to the firm through testing times, rather than laterals.

Make the appraisal/promotion cycle, much more transparent.

Please be advised, that there are other people working in Cognizant than South INdians.

Please distribute the projects or accounts among other centers too, rather than concentrating only on Chennai, Pune & Kolkatta.

Pros

nothing really.
Good facilities like AC/chair ,system

Cons

No salary hike at all
If you are "client" it's best place for you.
If you are an IT professional ,then this is _THE worst one.

Advice to Senior Management

Unless you guyz change very soon, CTS will go down for sure.Hirinh bunch of Freshers (ELT) never going to help you .

Pros

Not everything is bad at Cognizant. You would love the job, no doubts. But, there is no such a thing called growth at cognizant.

Cons

So many of them.
1.)They would be first to visit your campus and they would pay you the least. Fine, pay doesnt matter initially.
2.) Then, they even ask you to relocate. No problems with that either as long as they could provide an accommodation even for a single day. But no, you are expected to find your own accommodation from day 1. Fine, getting to find a decent flat in cities like bangalore or chennai is no big deal. But, what about people who are too new to these cities. You find an accommodation somehow, thanks to the good friends.
3.) You start working. You enjoy your work. There ends the good news. You would be at work 12-15 hours everyday. Fine, as long as you are enjoying work. But does that effect your pay. A big NO.
4.) Here comes the best part. You slog. Work hard. Work wonders for the team. You are 1 year old at Cognizant. Any hikes? Well, it so happened that 2006-2007, all companies had to raise their entry-level payscales. So, unfortunately for Cognizant, they had to raise their fresher pays too. STILL BEING THE WORST Paymaster in it's league. What now, a 2006 guy is being paid x, companies rasied pay to 1.7x. We'll make the 2007 entrants pay to 1.5x and we will keep the 2006 guys' pay at x as long as they don't agitate. They agitate and the generous HR raise the pay to 1.5x+5k every year which is almost the same as people who have joined the company 1 year after you have.
5.) Step 3 continues for another year.
6.) 2008 guys come in. Your pay doesnt raise. Add +5k every year. Oh forgot, the yearly revision would add a very gracious 20k (per annum) hike. Wow!
7.) Ok fine. Even so, we have onsite things and promotions. Well, promotions at Cognizant, my dear, would solely be in terms of experience. Meaning, you are eligible for a promotion when everyone else who has more experience than you gets promoted.
8.) The worst of all. Cognizant grows through it's employees money. Meaning, Cognizant could be a 3 bn $ company. But, had it tried to be an employee friendly organization with decent compensation (atleast as much it's peer companies pay), it wouldn't have been a 2 bn $ assets company either.

This could be happening in every company. But this is solely my personal review. I am not happy about the company and there it ends. There could be people who agree to my views about the company. There could be people who don't. But, my views are very relevant if you are a NOT A LATERAL hire at Cognizant (meaning recruited from college).

Advice to Senior Management

No advice would help. They had been advised enough times.

Pros

- large number of projects
- variety of jobs
- decent salary after a certain designation
- in this culture of hire and fire, relatively a little more stability here( not that hire-n-fire does not happen here)

Cons

- constant relocations, even for 2 weeks projects. this limits your job life till you are a bachelor or married with no kids.
- job security but no role security. your designation or title does not matter. if you are manager and the next assignment is data entry, that's what you do to keep you billable.
- management structure designed to incentivise working slow. slow means more hours. more hours meaning more dollar to company.

Advice to Senior Management

- focus on outcome based pricing models, fixed bid or those models that force you to incentivise knowledge and capability building. this will shift the focus towards quality and you will see quality people rise to occasion.
- the smart people in the organization have understood that you are interested in harvesting their experience and then replacing them with freshers. just having KM tool does not mean that smart people will contribute to it. only when senior management demonstrates that they are following a sound business strategy that focusses on rewarding excellence that associates will be eager to contribute to it.

Pros

The compensation is competitive and the benefits are good, though all of the benefits are self-serve. You can never get in touch with anyone in HR to assist with any of the elections.

Cons

The careers page on the website is most misleading, namely with this statement: "you’ll find a global, inclusive and a richly diverse workforce. Our employees represent almost every nationality on earth so you’re sure to fit in."

Cognizant's workforce (even in the US) are 95% Indian-nationals so there is virtually zero diversity.

Also, they are trying to compete with the MNCs like Accenture and IBM so they are marketing themselves as a consulting firm to Wall Street. Consultants beware, this is not a consulting firm. Consultants are treated on-par with offshore resources and this is nowhere more apparent than when dealing with HR and their 4 week bench policy.

Advice to Senior Management

This company would have to change their entire culture to compete in a recovered market on a consulting platform, and it appears that they are just now noticing this with the attention the demand to create US jobs is creating. US-based consultants who were trapped here during the recession will be making a dash out of here when the labor markets stabilize. Consultants have large networks, so many true consultants will be steered away from this company.

Pros

Easy to take shelter at this company if you take little pride in your work, have excellent brown-nosing skills, or have a golden parachute prepared.

Cons

Considering its aggressive policies requiring consulting professionals to relocate to client locations for projects regardless of duration (the alternative is to get fired after a mere 4 weeks of bench time or pay for your own business travel), CTS cannot expect to ever compete with the likes of "normal" consulting companies. Couple this with a host of shortsighted HR policies, unprofessional (and dishonest) vertical account management teams, and a culture of hiring figurehead executives who turn a blind eye to the company's obvious problems ... Cognizant will continue losing its best and brightest, leaving behind brown-nosers and brown-nosees.

Advice to Senior Management

The consulting sham will be exposed soon enough. Plan out concrete steps to build an infrastructure that empowers Cognizant Business Consulting unit, instead of paying lipservice to Wall Street. Do not surround yourself with yes-men, and take heed of those who voice concerns. Consultants talk to one another, so take action before its too late and the ripple effect of resignations begin.

Pros

Job security is good even in the times of recession

Cons

They try to fake the brand when they visit the campus for hiring potential MBAs

Advice to Senior Management

senior management is tooo busy to make the company grow in terms of resources as well as revenues... instead of keeping their existing employees happy

Pros

Very conducive to employee satisfaction. Very flat structure not very hierarchical.. People are accessible. High quality work if you are at the right place at the right time. I was lucky to get the kind of work i wanted.

Cons

THe comapny is am ocean. So it is difficult to get noticed initially. But as work progresses we get due credits for our work

Advice to Senior Management

I think the management is great. Amazing peoples skills and also very professional. The employee is considered for every decision made by the company

Pros

For young and inexperienced professionals it's a great chance to see the US. CTS got the low-value staff augmentation game nailed!

Cons

I am a non-Indian, US-based consulting executive with an Ivy League advanced degree and over 17 years of professional experience. CTS lured me with empty promises of consulting excellence from a Big-4 competitor over 3 years ago.
There is no way to be promoted unless you are a yes-man on the leash tied to an account manager. I am currently on a layoff list because I refuse to relocated on a whim of inexperienced, short-sighted and self-serving account managers and insist on travelling to client engagements. CTS will not pay expenses for employee travel and will not bill clients for expenses since expense amounts impact their PERCEIVED profitability!
This is a joke of a company. If you are an experienced professional - stay away from CTS!!!

Advice to Senior Management

Start listening to advice of those in your company who have been around the block a few times and know how to build and run a successful consultancy... or stop pretending that you are one!