Fun culture, engaging work - Senior Software Engineer Garmin Employee Review

5.0
Nov 28, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Garmin's culture is relaxed but motivating. I've seen senior management dress up for Halloween, but we're doing serious work too. Lots of intelligent engineers, so it's a great place to continually hone your skills. They are committed to their employees and hire slowly to avoid the need to lay off later when projects finish. Garmin is improving its training offerings, both technical and inter-personal, and in the last couple of years has gotten much better in that area. Because of the various divisions and the vertical integration style of the company, there are usually lots of internal opportunities if you are not happy with your current position. Many of my coworkers have transferred in or out of my group from/to other groups. Overall, Garmin does a pretty good job of maintaining a culture that feels almost like a startup (outside of Aviation, which necessarily is more process driven).

Cons

Slow hiring means that we are always pretty busy as we could almost always use some more people. Promotions are still guided mainly by time, not skill level. Management can be slow on the public recognition of good efforts, but they are working on that.

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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