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I normally work in the middle of four time zones my team is spread amongst. Yes, it can be a pain. Sometimes you have a 6am meeting and sometimes an 11pm meet
by biztos 6y ago
I normally work in the middle of four time zones my team is spread amongst.
Yes, it can be a pain. Sometimes you have a 6am meeting and sometimes an 11pm meeting and sometimes both in the same day. You have to have your shit together enough to deal with day-long lag for non-urgent stuff, and you have to care enough to jump on urgent stuff at all hours.
Even if you might rather have a chummy relationship with your colleagues, you have to be a bit more distanced and professional in order to accommodate the time difference.
But if you have a good team, you also should ask yourself: is the convenience of collocation worth losing the team?
At the risk of veering OT: there’s a pretty good business in arbitrage around these cultural blockers. For instance there are thousands of people working for Indian companies in Central-Eastern Europe because (mostly) German companies are a lot more comfortable if they can meet the dev manager on any given day and fly home for supper.
- kelnos 6y ago> Sometimes you have a 6am meeting and sometimes an 11pm meeting and sometimes both in the same day. I think we need to find a better way to deal with timezone-distributed teams. I personally would never find a 6am or 11pm meeting to be acceptable. If you require me anywhere from 9am to 5pm in my local time I'll be there; anything outside that must be strictly optional. And I mean actually optional, not "optional but we'll see you as not a team player if you don't show up".
- jobigoud 6y agoI'm in Europe and some of my coworkers are in NZ. There is a 12H difference. The entire 9 to 5 section of one is outside the 9 to 5 section of the other.
- hkt 6y agoAmen. I've done a little cross timezone working and can confirm there are a lot of "optional" meetings.
- Scea91 6y agoMany regular jobs are outside of the 9-5 interval so having a different schedule is not exploitative per se. In this case many people would probably appreciate the flexibility to actually have leisure and see their families in daylight hours. Of course, in the end it is all about personal preferences.
- biztos 6y agoOk, that’s fine, and there are lots of places you can work if you’re good. I’m not trying to virtue-signal about schedule flexibility, but if you have part of your team in SF and part in Bangalore somebody will have to work weird hours sometimes. I fundamentally don’t accept that it should always be the non-western side, and if you have a good team you will find a way to do this respectfully, without destroying anyone’s private life. Also, FWIW, during the 2/3 of my career I worked on site, a 9am to 5pm requirement would have been an absolute nonstarter for me. Biorhythms are diverse.
- bauerd 6y ago>Sometimes you have a 6am meeting and sometimes an 11pm meeting and sometimes both in the same day. You have to have your shit together enough to deal with day-long lag for non-urgent stuff, and you have to care enough to jump on urgent stuff at all hours. This sounds extremely unhealthy and the complete opposite of having one's shit together to me.
- biztos 6y agoDo you mean the hours are unhealthy? I mean maybe they are but lots of people have similar hours, think of your barista or your waiter or the non-employee staff that cleans your office. What about dealing with multiple time zones and schedules in a professional manner strikes you as the opposite of having your shit together? Having lived this life for over 10 years I’m genuinely curious.