Pros
The people at Liftopia are it's heart. You will never work with a more pleasant group. You genuinely like everyone there and look forward to walking in the door everyday because you are part of such a great culture. The CEO quickly becomes your friend and you know he would bend over backwards for you. Great place for recent grads to cut their teeth in SF, or ski-bums looking for a change from delivering pizzas in the off-season. Culture fit is really important here. Very much a For-Skiers-By-Skiers company. Pretty great work/life balance. Feels like a start-up. Opportunities to learn a lot and wear many hats. Casual environment. No one really expects you to come in and reinvent the wheel. Fun parties.
Kontras
The pay is below average and raises are rare (and inconsequentially small). The team is relatively flat, so the only opportunities for growth and promotion are for junior-level employees and temp-to-perm hires. Turnover is extremely high and staffing is consistently an issue with it taking months and months to backfill positions. In that vacuum, utility staffers get stuck with 3 different jobs, are overworked without additional compensation or promotion, get frustrated and leave, perpetuating the turnover cycle. The "open" vacation policy was rolled back to "at your manager's discretion" vacation, which makes it difficult for those utility employees to actually take time off, which speeds up employee burn-out. As a ski company, Liftopia is still (somewhat) ahead of the ski industry, but as a tech company it is more than a decade behind industry standards. No one wants to reinvent the wheel and tech debt is a constant impediment. Leadership is reactionary and rarely based on research or strategy. Culturally, if you are not a die-hard skier or snowboarder, it can be a difficult place to thrive. The downside of the For-Skiers-By-Skiers mentality is that the company (internally and externally) struggles to speak to, and provide value for non-ski-fanatics. While the ski industry is a great club, it is still a small and exclusive club. The business is ultimately a seasonal one with all the peaks and valleys that go along with it. The leadership continually struggles to break out of seasonal cycles. Growth and advancement is extremely limited.