If you want to write the next Dilbert, plenty of material here - Software Engineer Michaels Employee Review

1.0
May 12, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Despite being incredibly incompetent, they managed to hire some really smart and amazing people to work with.

Cons

Oh gosh. So much is terrible. Everyone's leaving, unless leadership is able to burn them out to prevent them from interviewing. Let's encapsulate everything in one anecdote. The CIO got his old CEO friend to hire him, started butting in to every decision just to leave his mark, then promised to rewrite the website all by himself in one month. After one month, he gave up and instead got permission to hire 200 people. He gave them what he'd "worked on": an Excel file of some database tables for a Point of Sale system that he blatantly plagiarized from the public API Javadoc of another POS software product. The tables had 2 columns: name and description. But description was a copy of the name, without the underscores. When asked what some fields were for, he said he didn't know and also mentioned that he wrote most of it while drinking whiskey. His original ridiculous deadline remained unchanged, the devs had to start before the UI designs were done, he brought in a shadow UI team to polish and rewrite the UI, demanded a UI rewrite anyway 2 weeks before it was due, all just to have something to show his CEO friend over lunch. Then they threw it out and started over 2 weeks after the deadline. It didn't get any better to work there, afterwards.

Explore other reviews about Michaels

5.0
Feb 16, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Had a really lovely recruiter w/ clear email communication back and forth. Process was a phone screen followed by an interview.

Cons

Interviewers were slightly late to the interview. Lots of technical questions, no leetcode style ones though.

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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