Pros
Comprehensive design experience for entire product cycle Analog, digital and RF design opportunities Enabled to make critical project decisions Work in multiple discipline teams (SW, ME, EE) Hardware quality and performance is very important to Garmin management People are very bright and fun to work with Garmin is an engineering company from the top down There are not very many design specialists at Garmin. Many of the engineers are jack of all trades. This gives design engineers the opportunity to work on many different problems, sometimes even at the same time.
Cons
Best engineers are promoted to team leader and manager position. No technical career path HR is over-staffed and ineffective Engineering salaries are not very competitive, working at Garmin is considered a benefit. Executive management has trouble delegating Executive management is very bad at training their upcoming managers. They just throw you in and say good luck. Very little accountability when something goes wrong Executive management has a long history of taking on too much and ignoring what is going on in the company. Nuvifone is a perfect example of how the executives were lured away from their primary responsibilities.