Good experience - Lift Operator Vail Resorts Employee Review

3.0
27 Mar 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The mountain is pretty epic...and so is that free Epic Pass. Lots of opportunity for overtime (pay time and a half). Sometimes can ski on the job. At least too and from lift every day. If not wanting overtime, you get 3 days off to play and ski each week! If you love shoveling and shaping snow to perfection as I do, this will be a fun job! Bosses love a good looking lift! Often got some green donations from chill riders for best looking chair on the hill that day.

Cons

Employee housing is only offered first year. $10/hr is hard to survive on in Vail but working at least 1 day of overtime a week definitely helps. Boss is demeaning if you actually do call in sick. I get it though, lots of college age kids just raging hard every night and call in hungover, but if you actually get sick you're out of luck. (I had flu and couldn't move for a day to find someone to take me to get a doctors note and had to come in the next day to work or risk losing my bonus). Try not to get sick as it will count as a strike each time towards your end of season bonus. Working for rich and entitled clientele base is always fun. Got yelled at a few times by guests who wanted to be better than they were at skiing and fell on our beautifully maintained ramps. Yes it's my fault you tried to turn ON the ramp and caught your edge and pulled your husband down with you :/ My bad.

Explore other reviews about Vail Resorts

5.0
12 June 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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