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I disagree with some of this. I think if you work with international teams, half of the time of day stuff is in play no matter what. But in general I sort of ag

I disagree with some of this. I think if you work with international teams, half of the time of day stuff is in play no matter what. But in general I sort of agree that we should all try to work slower/work fewer hours, for the good of society. But we shouldn’t harass those who have more time and interest in the work they’re doing and want to work more, or those who might need more breaks or work most optimally at a slower pace. We should care about workers collectively and individually, I think.

lijok 3y ago
Fully agree. If you have international teams, they shouldn't be working on the same project, if it can be avoided. Having teams with different working hours work the same project sabotages communications.
- ghaff 3y ago
  At large companies, it's unavoidable to a certain degree. In my case, it's mostly East Coast to Europe though which is pretty manageable. Asia to US is definitely tough. You're either going to have people on late-night calls or getting up in the middle of the night. It works for the odd sync but is tough on a regular basis.
- certifiablysane 3y ago
  I have to disagree vigorously based on my current experience. My team, working on a single project/product, is globally distributed. There are team members in APAC (New Zealand), Europe, and America, and (IMO) we do very well at communicating and producing solid results. It does take specific effort, mainly expressed in written communications in tickets/issues and other more ephemeral channels (Slack in our case). You have to think carefully about what information must be shared and how to do so. You can't just drop a random comment and hope for a good interpretation. There needs to be a "call to action": a question, a request for specific activity/response, or a suggestion (or several) for possible next steps. There also needs to be trust built between team members, which takes time and similar effort. But when this is unlocked to its fullest potential it becomes an absolute super-power. The problem you were facing when you finished the day? Fixed by your team-mates when you start the next day, some more progress (hopefully), and they hand back the next problem to solve. Apparent velocity goes through the roof and personally I find it incredibly satisfying. Mind you, this is all coming from an all remote/all async company. I can potentially see problems if you had two part-teams in separate time-zone separated offices with minimal overlap. Then you'd potentially run into the usual human tribalism and culture drift, and communications aren't necessarily going to solve that.
- jjav 3y ago
  > Having teams with different working hours work the same project sabotages communications. Not really, but you have to become good at written communication. Which has a lot of benefits beyond the immediate one. In companies where everything happens by people huddling together real-time, the result is (nearly always) that nothing is documented, which leads to disaster longer term. I've loved working on projects where the team is globally distributed so that there is activity 24hrs and you work with people with zero overlap on working hours. Instead of relying on ephemeral hallway conversations, you need to build a culture of updating tickets with informative content, documenting plans, and so on. This fill the immediate need of daily communication but more importantly now you have everything documented and a paper trail of every decision and bug fix which is incredibly valuable.
from-nibly 3y ago
We shouldn't.harras people. But working extra is working to build a machine that HAS to be worked extra. You are solidifying the fact that work CAN'T get done in the normal hours. And then when the company goes to replace that person they will have to pay extra to get the same thing. Even if you forget the workers. It's not good for the company. If you want to be selfish, no judgement, sometimes you gotta do that, but don't be confused about the fact that externally it does harm.
pavel_lishin 3y ago
> But we shouldn’t harass those who have more time and interest in the work they’re doing and want to work more I mean, sure, we shouldn't harass anyone. But if they're working 12 hour days, and pinging me on Slack at 7pm, they're the ones harassing me. If they're producing 5 times the lines of code that I am because they're workaholics, thus causing me to spend half my day playing catch-up to their unreasonable schedule, that's also not great.

lijok 3y ago

Fully agree. If you have international teams, they shouldn't be working on the same project, if it can be avoided. Having teams with different working hours work the same project sabotages communications.

ghaff 3y ago
At large companies, it's unavoidable to a certain degree. In my case, it's mostly East Coast to Europe though which is pretty manageable. Asia to US is definitely tough. You're either going to have people on late-night calls or getting up in the middle of the night. It works for the odd sync but is tough on a regular basis.
certifiablysane 3y ago
I have to disagree vigorously based on my current experience. My team, working on a single project/product, is globally distributed. There are team members in APAC (New Zealand), Europe, and America, and (IMO) we do very well at communicating and producing solid results. It does take specific effort, mainly expressed in written communications in tickets/issues and other more ephemeral channels (Slack in our case). You have to think carefully about what information must be shared and how to do so. You can't just drop a random comment and hope for a good interpretation. There needs to be a "call to action": a question, a request for specific activity/response, or a suggestion (or several) for possible next steps. There also needs to be trust built between team members, which takes time and similar effort. But when this is unlocked to its fullest potential it becomes an absolute super-power. The problem you were facing when you finished the day? Fixed by your team-mates when you start the next day, some more progress (hopefully), and they hand back the next problem to solve. Apparent velocity goes through the roof and personally I find it incredibly satisfying. Mind you, this is all coming from an all remote/all async company. I can potentially see problems if you had two part-teams in separate time-zone separated offices with minimal overlap. Then you'd potentially run into the usual human tribalism and culture drift, and communications aren't necessarily going to solve that.
jjav 3y ago
> Having teams with different working hours work the same project sabotages communications. Not really, but you have to become good at written communication. Which has a lot of benefits beyond the immediate one. In companies where everything happens by people huddling together real-time, the result is (nearly always) that nothing is documented, which leads to disaster longer term. I've loved working on projects where the team is globally distributed so that there is activity 24hrs and you work with people with zero overlap on working hours. Instead of relying on ephemeral hallway conversations, you need to build a culture of updating tickets with informative content, documenting plans, and so on. This fill the immediate need of daily communication but more importantly now you have everything documented and a paper trail of every decision and bug fix which is incredibly valuable.

from-nibly 3y ago

We shouldn't.harras people. But working extra is working to build a machine that HAS to be worked extra. You are solidifying the fact that work CAN'T get done in the normal hours. And then when the company goes to replace that person they will have to pay extra to get the same thing. Even if you forget the workers. It's not good for the company. If you want to be selfish, no judgement, sometimes you gotta do that, but don't be confused about the fact that externally it does harm.

pavel_lishin 3y ago

> But we shouldn’t harass those who have more time and interest in the work they’re doing and want to work more I mean, sure, we shouldn't harass anyone. But if they're working 12 hour days, and pinging me on Slack at 7pm, they're the ones harassing me. If they're producing 5 times the lines of code that I am because they're workaholics, thus causing me to spend half my day playing catch-up to their unreasonable schedule, that's also not great.