Good place to work, but rapidly losing its innovative edge, and the small company atmosphere - Software Engineer Garmin Employee Review

4.0
Jul 15, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

A lot of smart guys work here, and the atmosphere is generally jovial. Olathe is a very nice area, and there's no commute to speak of. Compensation is good for comfortable, middle-class living, and the benefits packages is great and takes care of everything you'll need. The work is interesting (of course, that depends on what you're working on), and new products come along quite frequently. There is some room for creativity and new, original work, but not much.

Cons

Garmin has grown a lot in the past few years, so the company has lost a lot of the atmosphere and feel of being a small organization. Now, there are lots of meetings for team leaders, and developers working on critical features can expect frequent interruptions from email and conference calls and bug reports. A lot of red tape is being put into place for developers committing changes to shared code, and, although code review is a good thing, it's being implemented in a cumbersome manner. This is mostly due to the outdated source code controls system that's still in use here, and which Garmin seems to be stuck with. It is also immensely frustrating to be working on a constant stream of products that are just not innovative enough, and not bringing anything new to the table for our customers (well, as far as the PND and cellphone markets go). Garmin seems slow to pick up on new market trends, and is happy to just keep on pushing out products that are merely a slight variation on a theme. This can be an issue for any developer who actually cares about the products he works on.

Explore other reviews about Garmin

5.0
May 30, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great work/life balance. Top pay if you're a top performer.

Cons

Can get boring with little opportunity to learn new things.

3.0
Apr 3, 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
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