Motivated/Career minded individuals look elsewhere - Product Support Specialist Garmin Employee Review

2.0
26 Mar 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good work/life balance, decent benefits, Salem location has brand new building with basketball court and volleyball. Great co-workers that become good friends outside of work as well. $250 Christmas bonus.

Cons

Garmin doesn't care about the people working Product Support and even worse if you work outside of Kansas. There rarely any growth opportunities and when a promotion job does pop up they always go to people in KS, no mater the qualification of person in Salem. This has created a bad work culture in Salem that gets more ugly every day. The biggest topic among co-workers is how badly they want to leave. On top of this, the yearly wage increase doesn't support the top performers that go the extra mile for Garmin.The max possible wage increase is 5% and rarely anyone gets that. What's bad is you can kill yourself working really hard all year being top 5 performer and get 4% raise or just slack off and do avg to below avg work and get 3% raise. Why would anyone try hard for extra 8 cents per hour vs their lazy co-worker? Maybe for a possible promotion right? but that not happening if you work in Salem. Garmin loves taking advantage of top performers but won't compensate them and will pass on them for that promotion if they don't live in KS. If your not motivated/career minded then Product Support might be ok for you. If you live in KS then might be ok for career growth but sill not great.

Explore other reviews about Garmin

5.0
23 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great work life balance Good people

Cons

Lower salary compared to market

3.0
3 Apr 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
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