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Comment by macNchz | Hacker News Reader

I’m a big remote work advocate and have worked with some amazing European engineers. That said, having worked as an engineer in the US office of a early stage startup with a European office, the 5-9 hour time difference is a not-insignificant impediment when you’re resource constrained and moving fast.

Even with great communication and good management, having little overlap during the day for realtime conversations made it hard for me to feel like we were a well-oiled machine, especially with so much of the product changing on a daily basis. It’s very much a complex decision to make, in my opinion.

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It’s worked better for me in teams that work on open source. Such projects tend to be intrinsically asynchronous and conducted via email, chat etc which is what you need to make a distributed team work well.

Yeah, there's actually some Linux kernel research that looked at what mattered for collaboration and time zones wasn't one of the factors. My counter would be that the Linux kernel community is a very mature one that's very accustomed to working asynchronously so I'd be cautious about generalizing.

Yes, asynchronous communication is the key. The synchronous communication is conducted sparingly in opensource projects. Say, once per month (video conference).

At my last company (US on the east coast) I was the only remote member of the team, and the 5 hour time difference, although relatively small, and with significant work-day overlap, was still very difficult. Having to wait until the afternoon for a code review, staying online to support my team later.

It did mean that my mornings were totally free and I could get a lot done - so it swings both ways, but outsource everything to Europe isn't the panacea some people assume it to be.

It can work, but not necessarily for all people.

The biggest time gap team I've worked on was east coast US and China.

Great. 12 hour gap.

US team changed to being in the office, or at least online, at 6am. China team started at 11am in China. Roughly a 3 hour handover time.

It worked.

But for some was a toil. When interviewing and taking pains to point this out, the usual response being "Ok, no problem" but then a few months later seeing someone looking visibility drained wasn't good. Helped them find an alternative role. And some loved it, especially the reduced traffic and sense of community.

During this handover period everyone had a webcam on their OC, a fair amount of travel between sites which all participants were excited for on and three US-China marriages happened over the years.

Great for some. Terrible for others.

Why do people who are remote need to stick with 9-5 hours? Plenty of people hate those times, and would rather work later/earlier, which could well lead to more congruent schedules.

Because it’s useful to actually talk to people even if it’s over video chat.

The point being if someone in NY works 9-17, someone in UK May be happy working 13-22

Working different hours from all your friends and family gets old fast. It gets old fast even if your family is on another continent and all your friends are on the same schedule. Most English teachers who come to China start in training centres where they work three evenings and two full weekend days a week. Everyone either leaves China or gets a job with more normal hours eventually.

I’m sure there are people who’d work 13-22 but I’d bet a substantial sum employee churn would be consistently higher.

I have fried st hat have worked shift patterns (some 24/7, some more like 4x10 hours “unsociable”) for decades and are fine with it. I have one colleague who works 4-12 5 days a week for the last 6 years and wouldn’t change it for the world. Another does 11-23 or 11-19 3 or 4 days a week. Personally I get more done between 18 and 21 than most of the day, hence I work 10-15 then 18-21.

Wife used to work for a company with an office in Yorkshire where working hours finished at 2pm (7-2 no lunch). Horses for courses.

HN does seem to bias towards morning based extrovert urbanites in its group think. It’s nowhere near as universal as you might think.

I think it would be rare to find someone in the UK that would be happy to work when at the time that everyone else is going to be in the pub.

Yeah, especially given the fact that literally nothing is open out of hours in the UK (with exceptions - but you wouldn’t be able to base your life on that).

Most shops are open in mornings, so I don’t get your point. Indeed almost everywhere is closed outside 9-5.

Not this someone.

In Singapore we are working from home due to the Wuhan Virus. I shifted my hours to start around 1pm to better align with our London office. I think it’s much better as I’m not a morning person so I feel far more productive.

Having kids going to school, having spouses and other people in your life that also have the same schedule.

It depends on how you manage the workload I think. I am based in California (and so is my client) and we have a team in Hanoi, Vietnam. We get a lot done as many tasks are done asynchronously. Plus we can deploy when the users in US are sleeping :)

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