Creative employees at Garmin are used and abused. - Design/Creative Aka: I'm Not Sayin' Garmin Employee Review

3.0
22 Oct 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Global name recognition. Benefits are good.

Cons

As a creative employee, I feel Garmin dismisses us as production artists. Most of all, HR and department heads outside of the creative groups have no idea what we do. And this is across the board from Industrial Design to Marketing. The major creative decisions made at Garmin are most often decided by people completely out of touch with creativity and style. I mean these guys (some of them) buy their clothes at Walmart and drive Ford Focuses. How do they qualify in deciding what looks nice? They have Engineering backgrounds and are interested in numbers, not colors. It makes no sense. Shouldn't the creative decisions be made by the Directors of creative departments and their employees? As far as pay scale, Garmin still puts emphasis on engineering rather than creativity. And I know what some starting Engineers get paid out of college. Does $15k seem like a reasonable difference for starting salaries between engineering and creative? Get with the program, Garmin.

Explore other reviews about Garmin

5.0
9 June 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Culture, benefits, pay, and onsite gym.

Cons

Time off is not up to industry standard.

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.

8
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All