Avoid local offices, awful scheduling - Software Engineer II Garmin Employee Review

1.0
Dec 26, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Imho all good reviews on glassdoor were mostly referring to HQ office in Kansas. Branch offices were quite different depending on your local projects and local management. Mine wasn't good. Often pressured us to meet unreasonable deadlines showing off to HQ. You can't work from home even you live far from office.

Cons

Lack of opportunities unless you are in Kansas. Garmin trying to evolve away from handheld gps device which has been its expertise for decades. Problem is years of inhouse driven development and lack of industry awareness in new approaches and new technoligies. Culture is very conservative and very "inside" the box thinking. New engineers leaving after about 2 to 3 yrs once they realize it takes an arm and leg to put this company on the right track. Scheduling is awful cuz garmin had been in its own domain for so long and lack of expertise in collaberating with other vendors. However it is good for intern and less experience engineers. After all they do have 20+ years of legacy code for you to learn.

Explore other reviews about Garmin

5.0
Jun 30, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

They have a great culture.

Cons

I don't have cons to list.

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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