After showering its top brass with salary hikes and bonuses last month, Cognizant announced bonuses of up to 200% for its employees globally for the calendar year 2010.

"The top performers have got in excess of 200% of the target performance bonus payout, while the average payout is over 165%. The amount rolled out to us is well above what we had expected. This is one of the best bonanzas given to us when compared to recent years," said an employee who has been with Cognizant for four years.

"The moment we got the news that the bonuses have been announced, employees were busy logging into the internal intranet to see what was offered to them. The performance incentive letters were made available through our internal intranet and internet. The traffic was huge and the server through which employees could check their bonuses was busy for at least 30 minutes, but post that there was a smile on everyone's face," said another.