Garmin Reviews

Pros

Garmin is a friendly place to work. Most of the people I work with are more than willing to help out when you ask. I say most because their has been a select few who I know will immediatly say I do not know with out even thinking of your questions. I even ran into someone who told me, "I am to busy." Those people are few and far between and you learn to steer clean of them. There are reasons why Garmin as a company has been so sucessfull and its because of its quality employees. No dress code is nice.

Cons

Need a better flex time policy. An 8am to 5pm with a one hour lunch from noon to 1pm is old school and outdated. Your employees will get more done and do a better job if Garmin was flexible with hours. Some of us drag in the morning but excell in the afternoon. Let us work more in the afternoon and less in the morning.

Advice to Senior Management

Give a better cash bonus and better raises. Reduce your dividend by a small amount and put the money toward cash bonuses for your employees. The employees work hard to make Garmin sucessfull, reward us with a respectable cash bonus. Garmin has the cash on hand and is consistently earning respectable profits. Maybe try a profit sharing program.

Pros

We make compelling products for fun and exciting industries such as boating, golf, fitness, and hunting.

Cons

Large companies often have too much buearacracy.

Pros

Good company name
Great hours
Great people to work with
Great benifits

Cons

No room for advancement
No acknowledgement
lack of communication
They have their processes all backwards

Advice to Senior Management

I would suggest that you listen to your employees. It use to be a wonderful place to work at but when the upper management disconnected from the employees, then the morale just failed.

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

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

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

-Benifits
-Great people
- Relativily low stress
-Ample time off
-Decent location
-Many opportunities to volunteer for community events
-Sports related activites

Cons

-low pay and under cost of living raises
-performanced based raises offer little difference from top to bottom
-over promotion just to promote
-Over inflated HR runs an engineering company

Advice to Senior Management

When promoting the "top performers" let them do their managment jobs. There are too many layers of managers. Each micromanages the one below them and all decisions come from too high up to question or gets answers.
This coupled with low yearly raises cause the low level manages and longer tenured associates to vacate and are being backfilled with new grads with no one to train them properly.

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

Benefits are good, but have been decreasing. Generally nice people to work with, but you do have to watch your back. Good holidays.

Cons

Almost no opportunity for advancement or moving to other departments within the company.
Decent Christmas bonus, but they promise a huge bonus for performance, which they make impossible to meet. Was there 4 years and never saw it.
To many HR people and it is really hard to find out who to go to for help with what.
Intimidation tactics from upper management to enfluence performance.
Increasing amount of micro management.
Hard to get time off when needed.
Sick time and vacation time are in the same pool, and if a day is not scheduled in advance, ie. sick, it counts against you.
Supervisors can generally get a customer taken care of, but the reps on the phone are given little leverage as far as being able to truely assist a customer. This wasn't always the case.
There are an awful lot of firings, which causes unease with employees and creates poor morale.

Advice to Senior Management

When I applied, I was excited to make a career at Garmin. Sadly, after 4 years, I realized I was going nowhere. It was such a good place to work 4 years ago. Please change your mentality and go back to the way it once was. You took good care of your employees, listened to them, and gave them the tools they needed to succeed. In return, we took good care of your customers. Intimidation does not work.

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