Consistent lack of planning and unreasonable deadlines - Software Development Engineer Michaels Employee Review

1.0
Feb 10, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Greenfield development provides lots flexibility and learning opportunities.

Cons

I’ve been there for 7 months and haven’t had a single 1-1 with a manager to receive any feedback or discuss personal development. They actively push for people to work weekends and question nearly all use of PTO (even around holiday) We have scrum masters but don’t engage in any agile/scrum practices since that takes time away from development(I’ve never groomed or sized a story) Lack of communication from leadership results in a lot of duplicate work and there is no time for any refactoring There are no tech leads or tech managers meaning everyone reports to a director who manages many teams and junior devs make impactful decisions with no real review or mentoring (wouldn’t be time for it anyways) Code base has 0 unit tests (no time) Deadlines are created by upper management (CIO/CTO) without any real planning or sizing estimates and even then are occasionally moved up a full month randomly. Development is done for demos rather than for production If I think about it I’d come up with more...

Explore other reviews about Michaels

5.0
Jun 18, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Benefits and the people there.

Cons

It was far away from me.

2.0
Jun 22, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Some great co-workers, employee discount, on site office benefits including a gym and cafe for breakfast/lunch, full suite of employee benefits at reasonable prices

Cons

Ridiculous amount of stress. Retail in general is often stressful but the amount of stress at Michaels is unnecessary and over the top. Constant last-minute changes by leadership to creative, promotions, products, and any other kind of changes. Things will be finalized and signed off on and delivered, and somebody will make a change at the last minute and things are constantly having to be redone. People are worn down and worn out. It’s the highest turnover rate of any place I’ve worked in retail at the corporate office. I’ve seen people take jobs and be gone within weeks. Leadership in some departments are extremely micromanaging and controlling even with employees that are tenured and have multiple years of experience. The stress level for both tenured and new employees is very high. Projects get discussed over and over and over again, decisions are made and then revisited again after decisions were made making delivery late and causing people to work unnecessarily in order to fix things that could’ve been done correctly the first time. The company tries really hard to make the workplace fun and offer activities, motivation, and incentives. Unfortunately they don’t offset what the environment is like working inside with some of the teams and expectations to actually deliver the work. Would not recommend.

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