Aviation Software - Software Engineer Garmin Employee Review

2.0
Feb 1, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good work-life balance. Decent salary for the area. Decent benefits. I hear good things about the non-avation-segments at garmin (Personal Navigation Devices, fitness, outdoor, marine).

Cons

Aviation is necessarily slow. Be prepared to work with tools that are well over 20 years old, mostly home grown. Most of management is made of former engineers. Unfortunately, most of them started as EEs and do not understand software. Most believe C is the ideal language for any and every problem faced in the field (actually, a few admitted to me they'd prefer to develop our customer facing GUIs in assembly language). You'll frequently get pulled of of your project for weeks at a time to help other teams test their code. This mostly means getting code coverage. There are very few opportunities for learning. Management makes no attempt to keep you up-to-date with the happenings of computer science or the latest tools/technology for engineering software. I can't recommend getting a job in Garmin's aviation segment unless you're prepared to spend your career there. You won't acquire very many marketable skills.

Explore other reviews about Garmin

5.0
Jun 20, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

People are great, work balance is fair and fulfilling

Cons

Not the flashiest benefits like some tech companies have

3.0
Apr 3, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good benefits and work life balance. It's a good culture and I've never worked at a place where your immediate peers are this helpful and pleasant to work with, even across teams and offices. If you want to just come in and do just what is required for your job and go home with the knowledge you have a stable job, this is the perfect place to work. I'd only recommend working here if you just want a job, but don't care about a career.

Cons

There is poor career advancement, especially if you aren't male. Leadership does not care about leading people. The RTO has made working here less appealing. The excuse that you can't collaborate unless you are in the same building makes no sense when you work with people in 6 different countries. It is about control and appearances, all due to incredibly poor senior leadership strategies. The pay is also low and so is the quality of the software you work on. Leadership likes to talk quality, but they like fast and cheap. They will not support you in actual software quality nor implement changes to improve it. The same issues happen over and over without improvement.

9
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All