Garmin Reviews in Kansas City, MO Area

Pros

• Employee benefits
• Fiscally responsible
• Friendly people
• Extremely easy work environment (no pressure)

Cons

• Little to no leadership in Product Support
• HR runs too many departments in the company
• Limited to no Career Path (or employee development)
• IT Dept - Tickets are left open for 6 months or longer
• Poor customer service for Canadian & Australian customers
• Engineering refuses to listen to the end users or look at market trends – lacking innovation
• Unprofessional employees are promoted into the management positions
• Employees are hired without the proper phone or computer skills
• Focuses on symptoms instead of the cause

Advice to Senior Management

My advice to Garmin is to find middle managers who are willing to lead both in practice and by example. Leadership requires active participation - too many members of middle management are there just for the pay check. I'd also advise Garmin to include the end user in the definition of your customers instead of just the big box dealers such as Best Buy, Walmart, West Marine. etc. Adding it to a Mission Statement is one thing but actually caring about the end user is another.

Pros

good people to work with.

Cons

jobs can be boring. pay is not the best

Advice to Senior Management

raise the salary

Pros

No-cost health care premiums are a big savings for employees.

Cons

The office is quite far from the urban core and there's very little flex-time (i.e. during a major blizzard, anyone who was not in the office was forced to take vacation time). There are a large number of burglaries and acts of vandalism that happen on company property, yet with all of the cameras at Garmin, they rarely catch the criminal. Management by intimidation from executive leadership is normal.

Advice to Senior Management

Garmin's managers are so busy in meetings all day long that they tend to easily fall out of touch with their employees. Management is completely inflexible and their business thinking is stuck in the '80s.

Pros

My group at Garmin was very talented - the most talented team I have worked with in my career. My bosses recognized the talent and push us each to have many responsibilities. It was a very fulfilling place to work, and it was a treat to be able to see the products I developed on store shelves.

Cons

There were many other groups that didn't share the positive team dynamic that I experienced. There were areas of the company that were very bureaucratic, and areas where the individual engineer was ignored by management.

Advice to Senior Management

I would recommend trying to better recruit top-level engineers, and to expect each engineer to develop significant responsibilities for the products or features they are working on.

Pros

almost entirely paid for benefits
easy job,

Cons

hard to move up, based on sucking up as most companies
long pointless interview processes

Pros

They really care about the employees. They have the best benefits I have been able to find in a company yet.

Cons

Human Resources is not the greatest. They can be extremely unprofessional. Everything else about the company makes up for what they lack.

Pros

Great benefits, great hours, genuinely nice & knowledgeable co-workers

Cons

Somewhat slow at times, not particularly exciting work.

Pros

1. Lifetime employment if you are an engineer
2. Nice benefits package compared to other hi-tech companies
3. Focus on work-life balance

Cons

1. Opportunity to grow is absent if you are not an engineer
2. Accountability resides with C-Level mgt only. Senior/Middle-managers are "nice people" and "yes-men".
3. Auto business has no forward looking vision or growth plan

Advice to Senior Management

1. Focus on people development. Implement leadership development program and provide opportunities for growth to ambitious people.
2. Give freedom to VPs and Directors to make decisions, spend money and manage budgets. Reward / hold them accountable for their actions.
3. Move away from "core business hours" concept. It is not in tune with the international culture of hi-tech. Immigrants and single people are willing to put in more hours and be super productive. Exploit that potential.

Pros

1. Build cool products
2. Can see every phase of product development
3. Great benefits

Cons

1. Cannot grow without sycophancy
2. Growing into leadership roles are based on a 'Management By Strengths' personality test. Which was taken when you join the company. Unless you are in red category you cannot become a leader
3. Not so great Compensation
4. Inconsistent performance appraisals

Advice to Senior Management

Do something to reward the talented engineers.

Pros

may be you will have your job security.

Cons

no good appraisal. no bonuses, no salary hikes. no work from home.

Advice to Senior Management

Make more innovations in the product rather than having so many products with more or less same features.