You can make your own opportunities, if you keep an open mind - Marketing Associate Garmin Employee Review

4.0
Dec 29, 2013
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

401k plan is one of the best around--my financial advisor has told me as much, compared to other area companies it just plain rocks. Employee Stock Purchase Plan is also excellent. It makes me wish I made enough money to invest the full 10% possible. Health insurance is excellent--thanks to the current political situation it is (mostly) not free, but it IS much more affordable compared to the same plans bought on the federal exchange. Especially if you have a family, you'd be crazy not to take advantage of it. That good. If you are in excellent health, there's even one plan they'll pay you to take! Current department I work in has an excellent director who genuinely cares if her associates are happy in their work. She's also fantastic when it comes to how well we work with other departments and vice versa. We're fortunate to have her. Overall culture of company is informal--in most cases, regardless of title or position, anyone here will greet you by first name and talk to you face-to-face. No "corporate snobbery" here. If you're a self-starter who knows what your skill set is and what it makes you capable of doing, you can do very well here.

Cons

Take-home pay isn't as much compared to other area companies. The company reminds you with a benefits letter each year that it's a trade-off, but profitable as the operation is, it's still a head-scratcher. The only serious reward for excellent performance is a management position. Not everyone wants to be a manager. Not everyone is cut out to be a manager. I suspect many of the negative reviews here on Glassdoor for Garmin have their roots in a manager who shouldn't have been one. If you prefer a plainly-defined, start-here-to-get-here-via-this-and-this-and-this career path, Garmin is just not for you. There's an effort being made to make those happen, but they've really never been part of our culture. To advance, you have to be a self-starter, you have to ask questions, you have to make contacts, and you have to keep your eyes open.

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5.0
Jul 5, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Nice headquarters, good people, fun atmosphere.

Cons

Questionable C-Suite directives/policies. A lot of bureaucracy, and it's difficult to move new ideas forward.

3.0
Jul 1, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great, and I mean great benefits.

Cons

Poor local culture, everybody is in their own clicks and don't deviate from them. Not a huge amount of office friendliness. Not many team building exercises, and qa gets left out of alot. If you're not a developer, you will have a yard time socially. Coffee is the worst I've had at a company ever. Return to office was not handled right, and the wfh policies were written very vague by a local manager, but what they actually wanted was very specific and was not communicated at all(avg of 1 per month over the course of a year). This lead to a problem where I was denied a wfh request to grieve a dead pet because I used wfh 2 weeks earlier to register a new car ( that I got solely for work commute)

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