Come here for the people and the culture, nothing else - Software Engineer Garmin Employee Review

4.0
Mar 6, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The people, culture and 401K seem to be the main factors for retention at Garmin. It's truly a wonderful place to work and everyone rallies around each other when they need it, inside and outside of work. The 401K benefit is around 12.5% when maxed out which is incredible. The discounts help if you're a fan of the products, and most likely you are if you're coming to Garmin - hence the people, everyone typically is passionate about what they do.

Cons

There's a growing disconnect between Garmin and their customers. Market share doesn't erode overnight, it's lost one customer at a time. Vertical integration is great for the business but not for your career health. From IT to embedded, you'll spend the majority of your time on tooling and frameworks that don't apply outside of Garmin. Inflexible hybrid WFH policies, "3 days in office, 2 at home" with exceptions such as strongly discouraging WFH on Monday or Friday, when traffic is always the heaviest. Career progression is both well defined by YOE, and subjective based on your manager at the same time. Zero in-office perks to entice works back to the office, the cafe is mediocre at best and the average meal can be more than $10 instead of free, like most big tech. So much of the inefficiencies within Garmin are self imposed processes, it sometimes operates like a large bureaucracy with layers of red tape.

Explore other reviews about Garmin

5.0
May 30, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great work/life balance. Top pay if you're a top performer.

Cons

Can get boring with little opportunity to learn new things.

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.

8
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