Answer these in globalcast.
To be fair, it's not an "unlimited vacation", it's the opposite. Grade 9 and above are not entitled to accruals. They may take as much or as little as their manager permits.
The dept directors I know barely take 2 weeks off a year.
It's just like everything else at GF, just no consistency in how people are treated. Get in good with your manager (or follow him/her around like a puppy dog for many many years) and you can get away with anything even if you're incompetent and disrepected by everyone. Others who get the job done and actually try to improve things but don't treat the manager like Gandhi incarnate are left to hang in the wind like a wet pair of undershorts.
@Gone but not not forgotten, these people are NOT doing their job right. I bet some of them are easily taking more than 3 weeks a year, and they have full support from their managers, because the managers are doing the same. Its the level 8s and below who do the heavy lifting, and these 9 and up are no value add. GF is not a typical company in the tech industry.
From my experience (I was not L9 or above but associated with many who were) is that the people from abroad with unlimited PTO were much more likely to be given and take multiple weeks of vacation to visit home (or in one case SAYING they were going back to India for 4 weeks, but spent 3 weeks in Europe and 1 week "home"). The Americans were somewhat discouraged from taking more than a week at a time and when they did it was always "you JUST took a week off" even though it was 3 or 4 months ago. Though I did have one director that seemed like he was taking every Friday off during the summer, so that was a sweet deal. Oh yeah, and don't feel sorry for them at layoff time, I heard that they get a better package than the L8s and below.
The unlimited vacation time is a cost cutting thing–don't be jealous of them. They don't pay them out vacation time when they lay them off or if they quit and they are probably scared to use vacation anyway.
So I made some sarcastic remark to this post about "unlimited" vacation and I signed it "GFHR" (no expanding on the acronym, no mentioning anything about any department.)
Maybe I meant, Gordon "F***ing Hedgehog" Ramsey ?
(Read this while you can I am sure the censors will pull it in no time.)
Unlimited vacation is common in the tech industry and while it sounds great the reality is many at that level(if they are doing their jobs right) have a hard time taking even 2-3 weeks a year and truly disengaging while they are on vacation. In other words, it isn't all it is cracked up to be. Plus they then no longer build vacation time that needs to be paid out when they leave. Really, this may be more a cost-cutting move for GF than an additional perk.
If you're cool with your manager you get unlimited vacation.