Excellent work environment, amazing people in the trenches. Compensation is unsustainable. - IT Infrastructure Vail Resorts Employee Review

3.0
25 May 2013
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Working in the mountains is as awesome as you can imagine; the folks that are here truly want to be, and it shows. The vast majority of mountain employees have passion for what they do and take pride in doing it well. The laid-back mountain vibe exists on-the-job as well. Perks abound, and benefits are great (if you are full-time/year-round). Healthy work-life balance in the mountain positions is easily achievable.

Cons

Upper management cares little about keeping good employees happy, which is reflected in the fact that compensation, across all business lines, is not commensurate with the cost of living in proximity to a ski resort. Vail has demonstrated that it happily accepts the high turnover rate of hard-working employees (which they ought to strive to retain) because people are willing to come out here and subsist on Top Ramen so they can ski 100 days in a season. Therefore, for upward mobility to occur, a current employee must move on to greener pastures, leaving a position vacant. The company is perfectly content with this arrangement; 3 years of "employee engagement" surveys have made the employees' wishes regarding compensation quite clear yet the company's response to these results is perpetual lip service. This is particularly cancerous in I.T. due to the CIO dubbing us a "high-performing" department. Meaning the company has raised the bar for greater than 3% annual raises impossibly high while increasing the workload for all.

Explore other reviews about Vail Resorts

5.0
12 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The managers were really cool and the work was fun. Pretty relaxed environment.

Cons

It was cold sometimes and long hours standing but that was all in the job description and we got jackets.

2.0
14 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Most people are smart, passionate, and enjoyable to work with and be around. - Fairly frequent opportunities for development and advancement through the internal job board. - Nice perks if you're into skiing or riding.

Cons

- There's an unspoken expectation to regularly work significantly more hours because the majority of employees are very passionate about the ski and ride industry, which isn't great for work life balance. There's not much down time either; you're either hustling in season or hustling to prepare for the next season. - Climate change poses a significant threat to the future of the company. The season pass model mitigates some of the impacts, but not as much as senior leadership asserts. And, since bonuses are tied to company results, you can end up working super hard all year and still end up getting half of your bonus target due to uncontrollable weather conditions. - The culture has taken a serious hit since enterprise transformation work began. Lots of people are constantly stressed out and the atmosphere in the office is depressing. - Most of the time, it feels like senior leadership makes decisions in a vacuum without consulting any of the people that would be responsible for the downstream work associated with the decision. For example, I've seen senior leaders decide on a savings target multiple times without consulting the experts, who then have to scramble to figure out how to make it work. It creates chaos and negatively impacts morale. - This organization has a wordsmithing problem. I've never worked at a company that spends such an inordinate amount of time on the framing of a message compared to the actual substance of the message.

4
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