4 ms·
I am in a senior role; I have not relocated since the pandemic, but I have changed jobs, and I'm an hour behind my company's main office. My manager is two hour
by ivraatiems 5y ago
I am in a senior role; I have not relocated since the pandemic, but I have changed jobs, and I'm an hour behind my company's main office. My manager is two hours further behind me. We have employees across several timezones, including some in Europe who keep European time.
What our company does mostly works, with some caveats:
Officially, the office hours are 9AM to 6PM Monday - Friday, in EST. Theoretically, if you work regular hours, these are your working hours (minus lunch hour).
Semi-officially, different departments and teams set their own hours. Some departments, like customer service, are always available for exactly the official hours regardless of physical timezone - if you are a customer service rep in LA, you'd likely have to be be online at 6AM. I have quibbled with some departments (for instance, project management) which enforce this despite it not being strictly necessary, resulting in people having to be up early or logging off late for no good reason.
Unofficially, on my team, on my team, we work whatever hours they'd like so long as we a) make all our meetings, b) are available when we say we'll be available, and c) get work done. I work 10AM to 6PM my time, give or take an hour on both ends, Monday - Friday. My working hours are written down in my employee profile, which everyone has access to. If someone schedules a meeting with me earlier, I'll usually attend it, but I will ask for it to be moved if it's a recurring meeting. I have never been told this is an inappropriate request (I've never even been asked to provide a reason so far). Nobody's tried to schedule a later meeting with me yet, except ad-hoc calls between me and someone else who was also working late.
Sometimes, if I've had a late night, I'll take a nap for an hour or so in the middle of the day and work an hour later in exchange. On days when I don't nap, I will often take a walk for a similar amount of time if the weather is nice. I usually do these things later in the afternoon so I'm less likely to have urgent messages/calls. I have never hidden these activities, but I don't broadcast that I'm doing it outside my team. It's a nice routine.
Overall, I wish my company would embrace the semi-official/unofficial policy more officially, but I am generally happy with how they respect my time.