The criticism against the commitments isn't entirely fair. They are just guidelines. I found myself suddenly thrown into an entirely different product and doing

The criticism against the commitments isn't entirely fair. They are just guidelines. I found myself suddenly thrown into an entirely different product and doing entirely different things from what I expected, and when I returned to my commitments I realized I didn't meet many of them. My manager still gave me an "exceed" because he was still able to see that I performed and contributed well to my team and MS. And as for reporting to many people, I didn't experience that either. I had one manager, and was 6 away from Ballmer. My manager, skip level, and skip skip level were all in the same hallway as me and very accessible. My manager truly worked his butt off to ensure his employees were happy and headed where they wanted to head in their MS career (at least, as much as his power let him).