Garmin Reviews in Olathe, KS

Pros

100% health coverage
Low pressure
Friendly people
Job for life

Cons

Little promotion opportunity
Low pay
Preferential treatment to engineering (secret bonuses, stock not given to same levels in other groups)
Centralized decision making
They believe that sales and marketing are the same

Advice to Senior Management

Empower your managers to make decisions, and make them accountable.
Rid the company of the dead weight (not a lot of it, but what is there is infecting the rest).

Pros

* great benefit
* nice people
* easy-going style
* no dress code

Cons

* little interaction among projects
* no specific project goals
* no clear career growth plan

Advice to Senior Management

* listen to those who have a proven record and technical background/education instead of those who come up with empty talks
* try to understand why there are a record number of engineers leaving in 2011
* don't use less technical people evaluate the technical competency of more capable engineers. That will simply make 2012 another record-breaking year of people leaving the company
* use those talented people the right way, not just the company way. They have lots of other opportunities, too

Pros

The health benefits are good.

Cons

Non-whites Non-Asian females should not expect too much in the way of promotions. If working in the call center, do not expect any recognition for good work. Quality is not about rewarding you for what you did right but hitting you hard with what you did wrong.

Advice to Senior Management

Get new management in the call center. One who cares about retaining the best people.

Pros

Good Benefits, Good People, Good Product

Cons

Extremely silly and inexperienced IT leadership team.
Some of the worst senior and middle managers
Too many layers
Unfair and ridiculous promotion practices
Extremely low paid

Advice to Senior Management

Need some serious leadership overhaul and organizational structure revamping. Ever since the old CIO retired in 2006, it has never been the same. You need to seriously flatten the org, and quit dividing everything by business functionality. Also, please quit promoting non-technical people to management positions. Also, why are non-technical people getting paid more than technical people? Why are there a gazillion analysts? Instead of investing and trusting in your seasoned IT staff you continue to hire more cheerleader type individuals. you think the economy sucks so you can get away with this? Think again. Good people continue to disappear.

Pros

great benefits, three weeks PTO in your first year, very clean warehouse and decent equipment.

Cons

If you are looking to move up in the company it will not happen at Garmin. You have to live with your starting pay due to very small yearly raises.

Pros

Great Benefits that made the company famous, company has a strong health-oriented environment and is continuously tries to upgrade its offerings

Cons

Horrible Pay that is typical for a company with great benefites, however, Benefits are slowly going away and wages are not getting any better

Advice to Senior Management

Incredibly low morale among employees due to lack of growth opportunity, rediculously low pay, and dwindling pay

Pros

Very stable. Very low dress code. No pressure to perform.

Cons

VERY low pay or increases. Yearly pay increases are below cost-of-living.

Advice to Senior Management

increase yearly pay % increases

Pros

Paid health care
Relaxed dress code
Friendly people

Cons

Extremely poor HR- no professionalism. No brains. It's a sorority.
Extremely poor middle mgt. They generally have no mgt experience and receive no training. Conflict resolution is nil and poor performance is protected or ignored.
No career development paths
No training opportunities for your area of expertise
From middle management on up, they are completely out of touch with what is going on with the little guys in the trenches

Advice to Senior Management

Many of your vice presidents are weak at best. Poor performance by employees (including managers) should be addressed and dealt with.

Pros

Comprehensive design experience for entire product cycle
Analog, digital and RF design opportunities
Enabled to make critical project decisions
Work in multiple discipline teams (SW, ME, EE)
Hardware quality and performance is very important to Garmin management
People are very bright and fun to work with
Garmin is an engineering company from the top down
There are not very many design specialists at Garmin. Many of the engineers are jack of all trades. This gives design engineers the opportunity to work on many different problems, sometimes even at the same time.

Cons

Best engineers are promoted to team leader and manager position.
No technical career path
HR is over-staffed and ineffective
Engineering salaries are not very competitive, working at Garmin is considered a benefit.
Executive management has trouble delegating
Executive management is very bad at training their upcoming managers. They just throw you in and say good luck.
Very little accountability when something goes wrong
Executive management has a long history of taking on too much and ignoring what is going on in the company. Nuvifone is a perfect example of how the executives were lured away from their primary responsibilities.

Advice to Senior Management

It would be good if the CEO and President would begin a comprehensive training program aimed at empowering their management staff. They do not seem to be concerned with who will replace them, just the day to day tasks. Both CEO and President micro manage nearly every task. Everyone on the executive management staff needs to learn to delegate and train their replacements. Second guessing everything your business segments do is wearing everyone out.

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.