Was a great company to work for, now it's only average to below average.
Pros
Probably the best thing about Garmin is it's relaxed work environment. Casual dress code, friendly people, etc make working there relaxing. Benefits are great though it's been indicated that the health care may be getting cut some. After the Best Place to Work survey disaster last year they have made some effort to correct some issues. It's not a bad place at all to work, just significantly below what it used to be unfortunately.
Cons
Where do I start? Basically, the main problem is compensation. Almost every review on here mentions it, yet they do nothing about it despite ridiculously high turnover rates. They don't value employees at all, we're just a commodity. If someone gets offered a better position, most companies will try and match that offer to keep that person. Not Garmin, they'll just tell you to pack your bags and good luck, which is really insane when for $10k more you could have kept your 10 year veteran. Instead, they'd rather just replace them with another new hire (who ironically won't even make it close to 10 years, most of the new guys bail about year 5 due to the out of whack pay scale). Probably the second biggest problem is actually the fact that the upper level management is so oblivious to the problems. When they hear a problem, by far the two most common responses are to a) sweep it under the rug and ignore it or b) pretend it's just an isolated case and not representative of Garmin as a whole. Just like this review, they'll pretend like it's an isolated case and not representative of the company as a whole. In their minds, Garmin in 2013 is an awesome and great place to work at, just like they thought last year before they gave that survey. They've totally lost touch with reality unfortunately. The only time I've ever seen the company actually respond to issues is when the Best Place to Work survey was a complete surprise disaster last year. Unfortunately, it was only a surprise to upper management, as people had been trying to tell them there were problems for almost 2 1/2 years but no one upstairs paid any attention. Other items: Flexible work hours are very limited compared to most companies, and some managers are very strict on them. There is no advancement path for anyone. In most jobs, advancement means taking on new responsibilities and getting a nice pay raise. At Garmin, you can get a title change but there's very little to no financial reward in it, so what's the point? We make no attempt to keep employees who get other jobs There are zero bonuses for doing a good job, working lots of overtime, innovating a new project on your own time. Basically no incentive to actually do more than the normal job.
