Poor leadership, toxic culture - Sr Manager, Marketing Vail Resorts Employee Review

2.0
Nov 24, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good work/life balance Interesting topic

Cons

Extremely toxic culture - "in" vs out crowd; people try to start drama and poke holes in things to add value when they don't know how to improve something; people can be very fake; people will gossip to try to bring people they don't like down Little room for advancement Adverse to trying new things - company's marketing sophistication feels like its a decade behind where it should be VPs micromanage *everything* - you have no real control over the vision of projects; if you don't do something exactly how they or a Senior Director wanted, it's considered to be wrong Low pay for the industry. They really milk a $1k ski pass for about $5k-$10k in salary. No 401k match until 1 year in is insulting

Explore other reviews about Vail Resorts

5.0
Jun 12, 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
May 14, 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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