Dull cubicle farm - Senior Software Engineer Garmin Employee Review

1.0
5 Oct 2013
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

They pay well for the area and the benefits package is the best around. The people are friendly and there are lots of out of work activities arranged.

Cons

They had the audacity to advertise themselves as the "Google of the mid-west" but nothing could be further from the truth. This is a grey, old fashioned cubicle farm where employees clock in at 8, go through hours of pointless meetings and clock out at 5pm on the dot with barely any work being done. If you do try to get any work done you will be hit by roadblocks at every turn. Usually fighting their out-dated internal software and practices but it can also be peers and management expressing shock (and disappointment!) at your progress for "making them look bad". I didn't last long here. It felt like being strangled and suppressed, dying a little piece every day until you join the ranks of the Garmin zombies trudging through to retirement and a gold watch.

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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.

9
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