Remote Work Timezones

Timezones still matter. It is a big pain to work with teams in a timezone 12 hours away.

my guess it's about timezones and visa. having 3 hours between a coworker and you is not that of a big deal but having 9hours time difference can be quite cumbersome.

As someone in Western Europe working for a US company, the Timezone thing is the biggest issue for me. My company is actually really good with it, but I still often finish work at 7-8pm local time, sometimes with little notice. Everything else can be worked around, or smoothed out, but this is the biggest intractable pain.

The biggest timezone gap we have is 3.5 hours, and they find it supremely convenient because they do other work in their morning. My company is based in the UK and we can only really work with people who can work in a moderately convenient timezone, at least on this sort of basis. If I hired a developer in San Francisco, I'd work with them in a different way, obviously.Nobody is being abused, don't worry!

This seems like a timezone problem at that point. Even remote teams can't function too well together if some of them are sleeping while others are working.

You've never worked in an org with more than one time zone, have you?

I am sure there are legal reasons but if I had to set up a remote company I would probably try to restrict the timezones. My current company has dev teams in South America and India. They are all good people but dealing with India [13 hours) is a big pain because somebody has to make calls during his personal time instead of work time. It’s a real burden. And in my view you absolutely have to make direct calls from time to time. You can’t resolve all issues with asynchronous communication.

This might be a good alternative for someplace like my company where team members are in different time zones. When I'm getting to work around 9 in SF, it's already evening for the team members in Bulgaria.

False. I need you on my timezone or really close to it. I have been dealing with software development teams that are 12 hours off and they have settled into a pattern of ill-communication because it is simply too difficult to sync up properly. They dig in on analysis for stories on their time and have to ask questions of us. The following day they get an answer and have to reply again for more clarification. All this after having groomed with the business and having standups together early morni

Businesses hire you with the understanding you'll be working in a specific timezone-- being remote is irrelevant. If you go half way across the world and your team is 12 hours ahead of you, standups (and other synchronous tasks) become impossible. If you need something from that teammate, you send a message, and wait 24 hours for a response. It obliterates collaboration and slows the business down.