You could do much, much worse - Anonymous employee Garmin Employee Review

4.0
2 Feb 2013
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Health benefits are excellent and have options where you may pay little to nothing for them. 401k match is outstanding--you can take complete control of your plan, choose a self-adjusting plan, or anywhere inbetween. Upper management genuinely cares about company,how its customers perceive it, and if its associates (NOT "employees," associates) are satisfied in their work.

Cons

Middle management is a mixed bag when it comes to the above. There are middle managers that genuinely think of Garmin as one and try to operate with other departments that way, and there are middle managers more concerned about protecting their fiefdoms than functioning as one company. Sometimes major changes happen that the entire company must accept and adapt to, without having prior input, because only one department required the change. It makes inter-department communication often very difficult. It's easy to get the perception at Garmin that there are two sets of rules, one for engineers and one for everyone else. This especially applies if one works in manufacturing. We grew so fast from 1995 to 2005 that there are two separate and distinct cultures depending on when one was hired, one that knew the small scrappy company and one that knows only the "big" company, and they often collide--especially in high-turnover departments like Product Support.

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5.0
20 June 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

People are great, work balance is fair and fulfilling

Cons

Not the flashiest benefits like some tech companies have

3.0
3 Apr 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good benefits and work life balance. It's a good culture and I've never worked at a place where your immediate peers are this helpful and pleasant to work with, even across teams and offices. If you want to just come in and do just what is required for your job and go home with the knowledge you have a stable job, this is the perfect place to work. I'd only recommend working here if you just want a job, but don't care about a career.

Cons

There is poor career advancement, especially if you aren't male. Leadership does not care about leading people. The RTO has made working here less appealing. The excuse that you can't collaborate unless you are in the same building makes no sense when you work with people in 6 different countries. It is about control and appearances, all due to incredibly poor senior leadership strategies. The pay is also low and so is the quality of the software you work on. Leadership likes to talk quality, but they like fast and cheap. They will not support you in actual software quality nor implement changes to improve it. The same issues happen over and over without improvement.

9
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