And you still need cultural proximity, which is a much larger issue than time zones imho. If you have a dev team from your cultural background that (fluently!)

And you still need cultural proximity, which is a much larger issue than time zones imho. If you have a dev team from your cultural background that (fluently!) speaks your language, I don't believe it matters as much when they're eight hours away. On the other hand, having a team a bike ride away that you cannot effectively communicate with and that works completely different culturally is setting yourself up for trouble. Outsourcing is much easier for things that are very clear and don't require much communication. For development work, I've not seen much success with it, the cultural & communication barriers are too strong.