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Timezones are still going to matter when it comes to remote work. I work on a team that was historically distributed in the US West and JAPAC regions. Communica

Timezones are still going to matter when it comes to remote work. I work on a team that was historically distributed in the US West and JAPAC regions. Communication was fine, because there was enough overlap that we could easily schedule meetings with everyone. But once we started adding team members in Europe, communication became significantly more challenging. There may also be legal reasons for companies to hire within a certain country. For example, government contracts might stipulate that only US citizens are allowed to have access to production servers. So while I definitely think that adoption of remote work will result in more opportunities for people living outside of traditional tech hotspots, I think we will still continue to see individual companies preferring to hire within certain countries and regions.

lastofthemojito 6y ago
Timezones are funny because you still get a wide variance of working hours within them. I worked on a project a while back with an early bird (~6am-2pm) and a night owl (~noon-8pm) who had to coordinate a lot of changes. I (half-)joked that they probably would have coordinated better if one of them was in Reykjavik and the other in LA rather than try to do everything in that narrow window when both were in the office. I know some remote companies have timezone-based policies (e.g., you must be within 4 timezones of NYC). I wonder if we'll see less focus on where the employee is and more on when they are willing to work ("I don't care that you're in Kyev or Mumbai or Jakarta, as long as you'll work our hours").
- ghaff 6y ago
  I know someone who has their own PR agency who lives in Hawaii. Most (all?) of her clients are US West Coast. She just keeps an early bird schedule.
ghaff 6y ago
Yes. I (US East Coast) work with Europe a lot and that difference (6 hours) feels to me about the limit of frequent ongoing realtime communications. It means you've got a nice window of time that isn't too early for the US or too late for Europe. More than that and someone's taking 5am calls or 10pm calls.

lastofthemojito 6y ago

Timezones are funny because you still get a wide variance of working hours within them. I worked on a project a while back with an early bird (~6am-2pm) and a night owl (~noon-8pm) who had to coordinate a lot of changes. I (half-)joked that they probably would have coordinated better if one of them was in Reykjavik and the other in LA rather than try to do everything in that narrow window when both were in the office. I know some remote companies have timezone-based policies (e.g., you must be within 4 timezones of NYC). I wonder if we'll see less focus on where the employee is and more on when they are willing to work ("I don't care that you're in Kyev or Mumbai or Jakarta, as long as you'll work our hours").

ghaff 6y ago
I know someone who has their own PR agency who lives in Hawaii. Most (all?) of her clients are US West Coast. She just keeps an early bird schedule.

ghaff 6y ago

Yes. I (US East Coast) work with Europe a lot and that difference (6 hours) feels to me about the limit of frequent ongoing realtime communications. It means you've got a nice window of time that isn't too early for the US or too late for Europe. More than that and someone's taking 5am calls or 10pm calls.