Bench management is a serious issue. I spent 45 days without project placement despite being hired for an active development role. During this period, performance was measured exclusively through certification exam results on timelines bearing no relationship to actual exam complexity.
CIS-DF certification — for which ServiceNow explicitly recommends 2+ years of hands-on production CMDB experience — was expected to be completed in two weeks. Before that, CAD certification, requiring 6–12 weeks of preparation even for experienced developers, was expected in weeks. Study effort was tracked exclusively through a single platform, completely ignoring official documentation, community resources, PDI lab work, and video content — all standard preparation methods in the ServiceNow community. Certification costs were not covered by the employer despite being a mandatory performance metric.
This was not an isolated case. Another new joiner was expected to prepare for CSA certification in four days.
The process itself raises serious concerns about good faith. On a Friday, I sat the CIS-DF exam — at my own expense, still actively trying to meet expectations. That same Friday, a High Importance email listing concerns was sent to me, and a Monday meeting was already scheduled. I submitted a written response to every point over the weekend. The Monday meeting lasted minutes. My employment was terminated without discussion.
On that same Monday morning, I had spent several hours in knowledge transfer sessions meeting my new project team — colleagues I immediately connected with and was looking forward to working with. The termination came the same day.
The mandatory company learning modules — genuinely useful content — were approached by management with a single directive: click through them as fast as possible. In a company publicly committed to reinvention, this was a notable contradiction.
