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Comment by benofsky | Hacker News Reader

Feels very unprofessional to me, really the sort of people you want to hire? Nothing wrong with not wanting to relocate but Garmin clearly didn't want to relocate just to annoy them, there were obviously organisational, cost or other business reasons to.

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I don't know where you're getting the impression that the website was rude to Garmin. All it said was that Garmin had relocated the project from SF to Kansas, and most/all of the team was declining to follow it. Just the facts.

(Shrug) I grew up in that part of the country, and left for a reason. Life's too short to spend it around people who think Jesus rode a dinosaur to work.

Sorry if you disagree, but unless you're a robot, professionalism only goes so far.

In all fairness, I grew up about five miles from the Garmin headquarters, and most people in that area don't believe Jesus rode a dinosaur to work (that would be in Wichita).

However, Olathe is a town of suburbs and schools and not much else. I wouldn't want to move back there, period, let alone from SF.

Same here, and this rings true. "Nice" is what you get, and nice has its limits.

Is that really the perception of Wichita? I would have said Topeka. (Most) All of the crazy abortion protesters are from out of town. (I lived in Wichita at one point long ago.)

I'll add that some of the parts of Kansas I've been to seem very nice if you want to raise kids, or just relax, although I wouldn't want to stay there long term.

I almost threw Topeka in there, but I wanted to keep it simple.

I know a lot of decidedly cool people from Wichita... but I also know quite a few crazies.

Absolutely right. People like this are just not going to be team players. Garmin is getting eaten alive by GPS pressure through the Iphone, they are not laying people off or asking people to relocate for fun. In short, this is a PR disaster for Garmin brought on by disgruntled former employees who just don't care.

Do you want employees that don't care about causing you a PR disaster?

People like this are just not going to be team players.

Is this the context where "team player" means "someone who will bend over backwards for a company that likely wouldn't do the same for him"?

The entire point of the website is that the team is looking for a new job. They are all team players... they are practically the shining example of how a good team operates.

Being a team player doesn't necessarily mean mindlessly obeying every corporate policy (though I suppose sometimes it does).

Exactly, its practically a miracle when a team gels well enough to actually work well together, never mind being so well integrated that they would come up with something this clever to try and continue working together rather than taking the every man for them self approach and trying to find new jobs individually.

Garmin isn't getting "eaten alive" by the smartphone market. Yes, Garmin, Navteq and others had market share eaten by navigation services on smartphones, however you are neglecting the fact a smart phone isn't a GPS. Try using a smartphone in a small airplane, boat, bicycle or while hiking. Garmin and crew are going nowhere, they may just lose the in-car navigation market to a certain extend. However, even that is a maybe/maybe not, because Garmin and all develop the navigation systems for stock cars. Plus, many older users will not buy a mount to put their tiny cellphone screen close enough to makeout, they'll use a giant in-car GPS system from one of the big manufacturers.

There is definitely no PR disaster. The site isn't knocking Garmin at all. In all actuality, the people creating the site do not seem disgruntled one bit. They seem proud of the work they did, they rep Garmin products and seem in good spirits. Sorry, but your analysis is way off.

Umm, I use my Nexus One while hiking all the time. I lose cell & data reception, but if I've already got Maps or Navigation open when I lose reception, it'll keep the map on screen.

Problem is your nexus one isn't ruggedized and has poor battery life in comparison, not to mention you can't swap out the batteries. For sure it works, but it's like commuting in a truck or taking a honda civic filled with tools to a construction site. Both of them work, but it's not the best tool for the job.

Also, if you have a large bike route, 50 miles or so, you have to cache a huge amount of tiles to see that route at any detail. Currently, Google Maps fails at consistently doing this even with expanded cache sizes.

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