4 ms·

8am is already not tied to an area. If you say "let's meet at 8am" in an email to a bunch of people and don't know where they are there is a good chance that mo

8am is already not tied to an area. If you say "let's meet at 8am" in an email to a bunch of people and don't know where they are there is a good chance that most or maybe even all of them will show up at the wrong time.

_jal 5y ago
Which... is why, when working with my international team, I type things like '9am PDT'.
- dexterdog 5y ago
  Which is fine when you know the other people are in another zone, except they then have to do the conversion in their heads. If you speak like most people do when not thinking about time zones you just say a time. If time is the same for everybody then there is never any confusion. The computers are all doing it in UTC under the covers. The conversion is just because we have arbitrary layers on top of that.
- tialaramex 5y ago
  PDT meaning? The reason for using Continent/City is that it's unambiguous and it's easy to find out what the time is in a city -worst case you can ask someone who lives there.
  - btilly 5y ago
    But PDT is unambiguous. It is used for nothing except Pacific Daylight Time. That was standardized a long time before the Olsen database which added Continent/City as a convenience.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > But PDT is unambiguous PDT might be, but others aren't (e.g., ACT, ADT, AMT, and AST are all ambiguous, and that's just in the As)
  - Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
    Pacific Daylight Time because we are in daylight time. Some places don't observe daylight time like Arizona.
    - boneitis 5y ago
      Luckily, I'm in the middle of a work-avoidance session, and I found some delicious trivia[0]. ''' Unlike most of the United States, Arizona does not observe daylight saving time (DST), with the exception of the Navajo Nation, which does observe DST. The Hopi Reservation, which is not part of the Navajo Nation but is geographically surrounded by it, also does not observe DST. For this reason, driving the length of Arizona State Route 264 east from Tuba City while DST is in place involves six time zone changes in less than 100 miles (160 km). ''' [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Arizona https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Arizona
- eikenberry 5y ago
  I always just basically ignore TZs and always use UTC when communicating with my international team. Only using a single timezone for everything simplifies things a lot.
  - stavros 5y ago
    How do you handle DST? That's the only wrinkle I can see, recurring meetings changing time based on the season. With location-specific meetings, we've been lucky so far and all countries involved switched to DST at around the same time.
    - adolph 5y ago
      No Daylight Saving Time in UTC Daylight Saving Time (DST) is not used for UTC as it is a time standard for all time zones https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zone/timezone/utc https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zone/timezone/utc
      - x3n0ph3n3 5y ago
        That's exactly the issue -- you want your local meeting at a particular local time, and if you schedule it in UTC, the meeting shifts by an hour twice a year.
        leetcrew 5y ago
        this isn't a solvable problem with a sufficiently dispersed group. not even all US states observe DST, let alone all the countries in the world. you can't set a recurring meeting that will always be at the same local time for everyone.

_jal 5y ago

Which... is why, when working with my international team, I type things like '9am PDT'.

dexterdog 5y ago
Which is fine when you know the other people are in another zone, except they then have to do the conversion in their heads. If you speak like most people do when not thinking about time zones you just say a time. If time is the same for everybody then there is never any confusion. The computers are all doing it in UTC under the covers. The conversion is just because we have arbitrary layers on top of that.
tialaramex 5y ago
PDT meaning? The reason for using Continent/City is that it's unambiguous and it's easy to find out what the time is in a city -worst case you can ask someone who lives there.
- btilly 5y ago
  But PDT is unambiguous. It is used for nothing except Pacific Daylight Time. That was standardized a long time before the Olsen database which added Continent/City as a convenience.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > But PDT is unambiguous PDT might be, but others aren't (e.g., ACT, ADT, AMT, and AST are all ambiguous, and that's just in the As)
- Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
  Pacific Daylight Time because we are in daylight time. Some places don't observe daylight time like Arizona.
  - boneitis 5y ago
    Luckily, I'm in the middle of a work-avoidance session, and I found some delicious trivia[0]. ''' Unlike most of the United States, Arizona does not observe daylight saving time (DST), with the exception of the Navajo Nation, which does observe DST. The Hopi Reservation, which is not part of the Navajo Nation but is geographically surrounded by it, also does not observe DST. For this reason, driving the length of Arizona State Route 264 east from Tuba City while DST is in place involves six time zone changes in less than 100 miles (160 km). ''' [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Arizona https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Arizona
eikenberry 5y ago
I always just basically ignore TZs and always use UTC when communicating with my international team. Only using a single timezone for everything simplifies things a lot.
- stavros 5y ago
  How do you handle DST? That's the only wrinkle I can see, recurring meetings changing time based on the season. With location-specific meetings, we've been lucky so far and all countries involved switched to DST at around the same time.
  - adolph 5y ago
    No Daylight Saving Time in UTC Daylight Saving Time (DST) is not used for UTC as it is a time standard for all time zones https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zone/timezone/utc https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zone/timezone/utc
    - x3n0ph3n3 5y ago
      That's exactly the issue -- you want your local meeting at a particular local time, and if you schedule it in UTC, the meeting shifts by an hour twice a year.
      - leetcrew 5y ago
        this isn't a solvable problem with a sufficiently dispersed group. not even all US states observe DST, let alone all the countries in the world. you can't set a recurring meeting that will always be at the same local time for everyone.