I&#x27;m a UK employee of a US bank and manage 3 employees based in NY. To be perfectly honest I&#x27;ve not noticed any significant pressure on my US colleagues and team to not take vacation days. If anything my own US based manager is frequently reminding everyone to plan their vacations and not leave too much of their allowance until the end of the year. So clearly this culture of not taking full vacation days isn&#x27;t ubiquitous, and of course the culture may be different in other parts of the bank - I work on the tech side. Maybe it&#x27;s partly because as a global organization the US side has absorbed some of the vacation culture from other regions. Don&#x27;t know.<p>Having said that, contract employees are only paid for the days they attend, and they tend to take much fewer days off in the US than UK based contractors, typically maybe 2-5 or so per year. But that&#x27;s their decision.