Great insurance, but the bench needs A LOT of improvement - Associate Software Engineer Cognizant Employee Review

Clients can make projects a bit of a nightmare. Some clients are straight forward about what's going on on their end while others keep those on Cognizant's side in the dark. Often the only time I wasn't blindsided by a huge change was when some one on the client side team told us ahead of the announcement so we had a heads up. The other big con to Cognizant is when you're off a project you're put on the bench for 5 weeks. If you're salaried you still get paid, but those that are hourly are not. Luckily I was salaried, but it still wasn't a great experience. Those in TMP that are suppose to be helping us find placements often requested projects for me that were no where close to my skills or skill level. A lot of the projects that were presented to me by TMP were devops despite clearly having zero devops experienced as well as multiple team lead and architect positions despite the fact that I'm no where near experienced enough for those positions. When brought up to TMP I was told that they only sent positions you were qualified for even though both myself and comments on rejected projects said I didn't have enough experience for those positions. They also tell you at the beginning of being on the bench to only interact with people through TMP and that after saying you're interested the client will contact you to set up an interview. This NEVER happens. Instead client just find your profile on TMP and randomly call you and refuse to give any project information so you can't follow up or even know what position you're interviewing for. It's such a mess. Last main con is that the COLA is really off in some areas. Also if you apply here be aware that they may include a salary and cola, but then if you're working from home and use your home city that isn't specifically one of the few cities they have for each state you won't get any cola.