A good business held back by poor management - Anonymous Vail Resorts Employee Review

2.0
7 Jan 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Free ski pass and retail discounts, interesting product if you enjoy skiing, on mountain experience days, exposure to interesting business issues

Cons

The pay is absolutely awful compared to the hours. The culture is extremely toxic and political and this starts at the top. There is a huge 'yes man' culture and if you disagree or go against the grain, you'll be penalized. Performance seems to be assessed based on politics and tenure with the company rather than merit, experience, and technical background, and there's a huge performance issue now where there are people in leadership positions aren't ready to truly lead others. Managers will try to gaslight you and in some cases yell at you, and there is always blame to be assigned when something goes wrong. Seems that this is a product of upper management's lack of willingness or ability to be accountable and this trickles down through the organization. No one here actually does anything or is productive and it's a big game of delegating work around until someone finally takes it. This is packaged as 'development' but really it's exploitation of hard working junior employees that are hoping to move up. I work with multiple senior leaders that don't have the skills or knowledge they need to do their job... but hey they've been here for a while! On top of all the cultural issues, senior leadership consistently makes poor business decisions and ignores what their teams are telling them about the business. There's no process around anything and everything we do feels like it's disorganized and micromanaged. I've never been somewhere where I lacked faith in executive leadership and their basic business sense like this. It's one bad decision after the next and then confusion around why the business doesn't perform. Even worse, management will sign the business up for unrealistic targets the team doesn't agree with, and then bonuses get cut because we missed guidance.

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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