Ok place to work, not much room to advance. - Anonymous employee Cotopaxi Employee Review

2.0
Jul 9, 2018
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Working downtown is nice. Being close to a ton of good restaurants is a plus. Kitchen snacks though I heard the snacks have since been cut out. Everything Chelsea does for the company.

Cons

You're not going to get paid anywhere near what you're worth, because Cotopaxi is still in a start up mode. There used to be "In-the-wild-time", essentially permission to spend 10% of your work week outside, but as the culture disappeared and the workload outgrew the work capacity, this 10% in the wild became nearly unattainable. When I joined, we were doing quarterly off-sites. We'd backpack the Uintas or stay at a ski resort and ski for a couple days. Those went away when we moved downtown. Another con, the entire time I was there, I only saw 2 or 3 promotions, maybe. The C-suite is male dominated and the company very much feels that way.

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Cotopaxi Response
7y
Thank you for the valuable feedback. Managing culture in a growing company is not easy and takes daily work. I agree that being downtown has been a really fun change for the company (two years ago). There is a ton of energy downtown, and the number of restaurants is a huge plus. I also agree that Chelsea is amazing - we're lucky to have here, and I'm so glad we made that hire, which I believe shows our commitment to not just maintaining our culture, but building upon it. Her sole role is to build culture. Regarding the "Cons," I think I should address each item. On compensation, let me explain how we determine salaries. We pay market wages - people either make a lateral move with their previous compensation or often times get a step-up (maybe with the exception of employees moving from NYC or SF where the cost of living is extremely high). We also compare salaries to those in similar functions, at similar companies here in Utah, and our wages are slightly above average. That said, it is true that if you want to go work somewhere to maximize your salary, Cotopaxi isn't the place to come work. People work here because they have an opportunity to build something, to take on big challenges earlier in their career than they would at a large organization, and to make a difference in the world ... and they'll also receive a fair salary and some equity/options in the business. Regarding the "10% In the Wild Time," this is still alive and well. This isn't something we track, but we probably should. Anecdotally, I don't believe this has decreased over the last two years and has likely increased, particularly in the last six months. We've made a big push to encourage people to get outside, including giving the entire company the day off on the Summer Solstice (the longest day of the year) to spend time adventuring. We even closed our retail store. I do know that when we moved downtown it was much harder to get outside than it was when we were at the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon, but we all knew that would happen with the move (not much we can do about that, unfortunately). Regarding the company off-sites, those were also a huge favorite of mine. These stopped for one reason only ... taking 75 people on a backpacking trip is not possible. Renting a ski house for 75 people doesn't work. That said, we've replaced these company-wide retreats with more frequent micro-retreats. For example, we had 15 team members go down to Lake Powell for a kayaking/camping adventure last month, which was company sponsored and paid for. We'll continue to offer frequent, optional team retreats where 10-20 people can go spend time together in the wild together. Regarding the company culture, I track this daily based on anonymous OfficeVibe reviews provided by employees. It's a fantastic tool and in the year we've been using it, our culture has seen some amazing results. We're at the highest level of satisfaction, fulfillment, approval, etc. that we've had since we started measuring. Regarding having a male-dominated culture, this is something I take seriously. Our first four major investors were female and our board has a long tradition of having strong female voices. At the Director and Manager level, there are more female leaders than male leaders, so our middle management is seeing strong leadership by women who are taking on bigger roles within the company. I personally track compensation by gender and Cotopaxi actually skews with slightly higher salaries for females (likely due to the fact that women have slightly better employee retention, meaning they've, on average, been here longer and had slightly more promotions/raises). I'm on the board of two women's leadership nonprofits, so I dedicate time outside of work to this issue. Regarding the Executive team, we are slightly more male-heavy, but we've added three Executives to the Exec Team since our founding and two of those three were women. I know there's more work we can do here, but I'm also very, very proud of where we are (particularly knowing that the outdoor industry, startups, and Utah businesses all tend to be very male heavy). Lastly, I hope that your experience at Cotopaxi was a positive one for you despite our imperfections. It sounds like you had 2-3 promotions in a relatively short amount of time, which is great. I hope you landed somewhere that was able to take the experience you gained here and was able to build on it. I personally wish you the very best of luck and am appreciative that you took the time to let us know where we can improve. I think many of those changes have already been put into action over the last 6+ months, and I'll personally take your feedback and make sure we do even better. Davis Smith, CEO

Explore other reviews about Cotopaxi

5.0
Apr 14, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Cotopaxi provides a strong sense of purpose that genuinely connects to day-to-day operations. The company empowers teams to build structure, improve performance, and drive meaningful change. ring my time here, Changes that have been made: strengthen team stability, elevate accountability, and implement processes that improved SLA performance, and enhanced safety. Leadership supports growth, and there is a real emphasis on building people and promoting from within.

Cons

The company is in the midst of a meaningful culture evolution toward stronger accountability and performance. As with any change, not everyone adapts at the same pace, which can create short-term challenges in team alignment.

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Cotopaxi Response
2mo
Thank you for sharing this, and for the specific callouts around accountability, team stability, and promoting from within. Those aren't small things, and it's meaningful to hear they're showing up in your experience. Change is rarely seamless, and we appreciate the honest framing of that. Building a culture of strong performance and accountability while bringing people along at the same time is real work and feedback like this helps us stay focused on doing it well. Thanks for being part of driving that forward!
5.0
Mar 22, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I've worked at a number of companies throughout my career and having seen a number of different cultures and working styles, feel very fortunate to have landed at Cotopaxi. I felt like I should make a post here after a friend of mine pointed out our Glassdoor rating when I said I was having a great time so far. The people and team I work with are excellent. It's a healthy positive culture, there's no politics, information hoarding, or some of the other baggage that you can find. It's genuinely a great group of people trying to do great things for the customer and the company. The management team is accessible and generally very nice. I've worked with mercurial CEOs and crony executive teams who kept everyone on eggshells and would jump on people any chance they had. Cotopaxi is very, very definitely not that place. They seem thoughtful and try to do the right things but I also know that there have been some hard decisions made in the past year, and not everyone has been happy about them. My exec team member has been very open to hearing feedback and it seems like they're listening. So overall a great experience thus far and look forward to being here for much, much longer.

Cons

Honestly, the management team could be a bit more organized in planning more than a few weeks ahead to help everyone have time to do their best work, but this is one of the things that they're listening to and I feel like it's getting better.

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Cotopaxi Response
2mo
This just made our day! Thank you for sharing it. We know the Glassdoor rating doesn't always capture what it actually feels like to work here day-to-day, so we're really glad you took the time to write it out. The culture you're describing - people who genuinely care, leadership that listens - is something we work hard to maintain as we grow. It's not always easy, but it matters to us deeply. We're lucky to have you on the team. Here's to many more months ahead!
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