[Rygian]

I work a strict 9am–6pm schedule from western Europe, and interact with both Asian and American colleagues. I simply decline all meetings that are outside of my work window, and it would probably be against the law for my management to expect me to do otherwise ("right to disconnect").

I do know, however, that some of my colleagues in Asian countries feel an non-official pressure to accept late-evening meetings so that European and American colleagues may participate.

[cinntaile]

In a sense you outsourced your pressure to a country where it is less socially accepted to refuse I guess?

[lancebeet]

The way I see it, the pressure has been "outsourced" to the employer rather than being an implicit pressure on the employee. Western European companies can also require workers to be on pager duty or work outside normal working hours, but it needs to be treated as actual work, adhere to the regulations, and be appropriately compensated. Prohibitive costs may convince the employer not to exercise this option and instead "outsource" the pressure to employees in areas with more lenient regulations. This is the choice of the employer, not of the employee working in the western European country.

[bunderbunder]

I work on a team that is split across North America and Europe, and or standard is that we all avoid meetings outside our working hours.

It’s understood that European folks try to schedule Europe-only meetings in the morning so that there is plenty of time available in the afternoon for NA colleagues, and conversely NA folks keep their mornings open for team meetings.

I personally shift my work day to starting at 7 so that I have an even larger overlap, but not all of us do that and it is not expected of anyone.

[jhrmnn]

How do you deal with the 9 hour difference between Europe and West Coast?

[benhurmarcel]

I regularly have a meeting at 17pm CET with a colleague on the west coast. That's 8am for him.

Yes he has to wake up 1h earlier than me on that day, but he also probably earns 2 or 3 times my salary just because of his location so fair enough.

[malux85]

I work remotely from New Zealand for a company in Ireland

I altered my work hours to 3AM to 12 noon. It is amazing.

I catch everyone in the office at the end of the day for meetings. I pick up and finish and work they need done, I get 3-4 hours of deep work every day when they are all gone.

And then I finish at noon, so I can go exercise and enjoy the day working on my startup.

Bed at 6PM to wake up at 3AM

[spaetzleesser]

This schedule may work if you have no other obligations. But it won’t work for a lot of people.

[accountofme]

Yeah kids will f** that schedule completely.

[ss108]

Not to mention the biological fuckery of trying to maintain those hours

[samus]

The need to schedule meetings at unreasonable times is one of the drawbacks of outsourcing and globally distributed teams, no disagreement here.

It's within the (usually hard-fought for) rights of employees in many countries to refuse such meetings. Unless they explicitly signed up for such a schedule of course. However, I would be very surprised if freelancers and people in leadership positions can refuse to participate in such meetings. In turn, they usually have higher salaries.

Of course, it sucks for people in other countries not being able to refuse to work at weird times. But if they could refuse, their country would immediately be much less attractive as an outsourcing destination.

Edit: tl; dr: regular remote meetings should between people in leadership positions. Day-to-day work should be managed by local managers, else it will either suck for everybody or suck enormously for workers in the country with weaker worker rights.

[spaetzleesser]

And the offshore team should be large to perform autonomous work. We often get only one or two guys from India or China who need to work closely with the US team . So it ends up with the offshore guys sacrificing their nights or the US people have to sacrifice.

It looks cheaper on paper but this way you get all the overhead of offshoring but bad productivity. It’s terrible.

[spaetzleesser]

I do that too. I am not giving into the pressure set up by the company and it’s up to the other people to refuse too. Otherwise the company sets up abusive systems and workers play along. We all need to resist this abuse.

[JCharante]

My company has a culture where it's totally okay to refuse, I've even gotten invites at 2am whenever they hold a webinar during their morning. Regardless of that we still see replies from engineers there when it's 2am for them (they are not on call at that time and it's not an emergency).

[closeparen]

The company’s boneheaded decision to hire people in incompatible time zones doesn’t create some kind of moral obligation for employees.

[spaetzleesser]

The disregard for time zones is really annoying. From the US offshoring to middle and South America works really well. But somehow we often end up with India where it’s basically impossible to find a decent schedule for the 12 hour time difference.

[fleischhauf]

its still possible to do meetings (timewise) between europe and asia at for both acceptable hours though,societal pressure aside

[vladvasiliu]

It can be, but people have to be a bit flexible on both sides.

The most extreme example I have is myself, in France, having calls with people in New Zealand. That's an 11-hour difference. Basically, we'd have them at 8 AM CEST, which is 7 PM NZDT.

8 AM is somewhat early by Paris standards (usual office day begins at 9 - 9:30, with many people coming in around 10) but it's still feasible. I don't know how the day is organized in NZ, but I'd assume being done at 8 PM is a bit late but still tolerable.

[franciscop]

But New Zealand is not Asia, all of Asia is a lot closer time-zone wise than NZ to Europe. E.g. depending on the DST, 4pm in Japan (the furthest east) is 9am in Spain (2nd furthest west), two totally compatible times. The problem comes when you try to make THAT compatible with the California as well, which we determined it's just not possible in my last company.

[vladvasiliu]

> But New Zealand is not Asia, all of Asia is a lot closer time-zone wise than NZ to Europe

Exactly. So if it works for Europe with New Zealand, it should work at least as well with Asia.

You should be weary with Spain, though. Even though it's quite out West, they're still using Central European Time (same as Hungary / Poland in the East), which is completely absurd. Hell, even France shouldn't be using CET, but WET / GMT. Only Portugal uses WET, and you have to go East to Finland / the Baltics / Romania / Bulgaria / Greece to switch time zones again (EET / GMT + 2). [0] is a handy map of time zones in Europe.

> The problem comes when you try to make THAT compatible with the California as well, which we determined it's just not possible in my last company.

You mean a call involving the three at the same time? Yeah, I can't see how that could be reasonable for all parties involved.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Time_Zones_of_Europe.svg

[franciscop]

Yes I'm quite weary of Spain, I lived there for 25 years! I am also wary of it since it's in the wrong timezone :)

[ipsi]

Well, 10, 11, or 12 hour difference, depending on time of year. Having been on the other side of that (in NZ, dealing with UK people, so 11-13 hour difference), 8PM isn't really tolerable - that's two-three hours past normal finishing time, so you either nip out for dinner before the meeting, or you're eating super-late. Plus missing bedtime for kids, possibly having a longer commute home (public transport frequency falls off a cliff after peak hours), although maybe a much shorter commute if you drive.

It worked out for me because I worked 1PM to 11PM or so (my bosses weren't thrilled about it, but not a lot they could do), but I'd have been very unhappy if I was working a normal 8 - 5 or 9 - 6 day.

These days I live in Europe and won't work outside my standard hours, with very rare exceptions, backed up by some fairly strong laws (Germany, so not as strong as France, I think) and some interesting wording choices in my contract.

[shaoonb]

I've been on the other end of that (taking calls in NZ from Spain and the UK) and agree. From what I can tell, working hours culture is very much the same in New Zealand as it is in France. Those in Spain always seem to be working late to suit NZ schedules, but I don't know if that's a normal thing or just our company.

[kilburn]

It's not normal to work past 8pm in Spain. However, I know several people happily attending international meetings from home between 8-11pm because 8pm is the standard go to bed time for the kids.

[vladvasiliu]

What are the common business hours in Spain? I was thinking everything happens later there, so a 10 PM dinner is not uncommon, because of the ridiculous time zone they use (Central European Time, when most of the country is West of GMT).

[dmos62]

Another aspect to this is that the far-away collegues might be fewer, so they adapt to the majority.

[samatman]

You can't argue with the clock.

When I was living in Hawaii I was up at the crack-end a few times a month, pounding coffee, trying to ignore the roosters.

Social acceptability had nothing to do with it. It wasn't a great hour for Brussels either.

[jll29]

I think cross TZ meetings should not recur in the same TZ.

Once way to make things more fair is to set up two or three bi- or three-weekly recurring meetings to cover all participants time zones. So everyone gets it to happen in their own TZ at least every other week or so.

I know the practice is often different, depending on where the company's headquarters are, but I encourage folks to spread the rotating TZ idea out of fairness and respect for colleagues elsewhere.

[bamboozled]

We do this too, but according to others, it would be against the right to disconnect most likely.

[micromacrofoot]

A similar thing happens at my employer. Westerners work more regular daytime hours, there’s no obvious pressure for asians to work nights, but almost all of them are.

[denismi]

0900-1800 CET is 1900-0400 AEDT. How would that work?

[Aeolun]

Hmm? That means half your workday already overlaps with the time you are in the office anyway. If you just schedule all meetings before 23:00 you should be fine.

[bamboozled]

I think your attitude is unreasonable in some ways. With remote work, you can (I'm assuming) plan your day, work your hours that suits your team. This includes taking your kids to the park during daylight hours, then working from say 5pm - midnight.

The right to disconnect feels more about letting people disconnect "after hours". But this depends on your hours.

[Rygian]

I fail to see what is unreasonable in my attitude, you give no explanation in your comment.

My "team" is composed of around 700 people across Asia and Europe.

My kids are in school during work hours.

My 6pm—midnight slot is strictly private life and there is no reason for it to be otherwise.

So, your last line contradicts the rest of your own comment.

[bamboozled]

Ok, that's all pretty subjective.

I said in another comment, If you were a police officer, pilot, truck driver, deep sea diver or in numerous other professions, you'd be expected to do some weird hours and have a lot of time away from home.

This is where I think people are being unreasonable. Remote work, we have it better than ever, no commutes, no time away from family, almost non-inconvenience but now, even a late night meeting is against "my time".

I think with remote work, the cost of walking 50 meters, sitting in a comfortable chair and dialing into a meeting from 11pm-12am is pretty inconsequential all things considered. You can probably have the meeting in your jammies on the couch.

I'm not 100% discounting that it's inconvenient, but I mean, relative to the things I've been through and others have to go through, it's minuscule in comparison.

Lastly, I think you're just lucky you work for a company who allows you to just say no to meeting with your peers in other time zones. Again, you might be lucky and everyone has a good crossover with you, but many don't have this luxury, and never meeting with your peers, at least where I work, means you're not part of the team and you're getting fired.

We rotate the difficult meetings in the group so we all feel some of the pain, but three is a bit of pain and I guess that's why it's called "a job" and why I'm part of a team.

[mantas]

Meeting ending at 00:00 means you go to sleep at 01:00 or so. That may be fine if you can sleep on till 9:00. But if the rest of the house wakes up at 6:30 to make their schedule… you’re in for a trouble.

[bamboozled]

That's true, it's not a good situation to be in that one having been through it myself, also someone who has had my fair share of insomnia.

Staying at peoples houses who get up early and make a lot of noise after a hard night falling asleep is never much fun.

A lot of good points on this thread, and even though I've always advocated for doing more async work within our team, I'll push a bit harder now.

[jenscow]

I think the unreasonable part of it is, if the other participants were in the same mindset then there would be no meeting.

I'm all for restricting employers from my personal space, however I would expect the same to be applied to all other members rather than be a special case.

Personally, I tend to rotate the awkward meetings so it sucks equally rather than weighted more on someone else. As a remote worker, myself and my family are ok with that because I'm available during the daytime.

[ianbutler]

That's not their fault or problem though. It's the company's.

[jenscow]

Regardless of who's to blame, the problem still exists.

However, if you're unable to work async nor be flexible to accommodate your fellow team members, then I suppose the company's recruitment process is to blame.

[ianbutler]

I’d agree they should be upfront about out of normal working hours meetings. I know id pass.

[piva00]

The right to disconnect for me is when I don't have to care about work anymore for that day. Whenever I work some odd hours to have free time during the day this time is simply much less enjoyable. I know I will have to attend to work obligations while I'm supposedly on free time to enjoy daylight hours. This pressure is not something I can turn off at will.

With remote work I appreciate having the option to use the inevitable idle time to be more efficient with house chores and such but remote work never brought me the freedom you tout...

I have worked remotely in the past before COVID and tried your suggested approach, would be free during afternoons and work from 17-00, or split the day in morning and evening work. It didn't ever give me the same relaxation as I get from having free time until the end of the day.

[bamboozled]

I'm kind of the opposite, I enjoy doing things in the day and sitting on my butt at night.

So there you go, we're different.

[Eezee]

How is having a structured workday where you consistently work the same 9 how window and expecting to spend your evenings with your partner/kids/friends unreasonable?

[bamboozled]

Honestly, if that's what you guys want, a 9-5. Go for it

For me working remotely isn't just about having my ass in a different geographical location, it's about flexibility. Both in my private and professional life.

I didn't say you can't spend time with your kids, but personally, working 8am-9am then 8pm-12pm doesn't sound so bad either. (for example). I find kids need to do homework and get to bed early so those times for me would work pretty well.