Re:Remote Work Report
by zamadatix on Monday April 20, 2020 @09:35AM
(#22923676)
It sounds like you were in San Francisco prior to the remote work change and went back to Sydney once that happened? If not how did it work when everyone was in the office?
If only one member of a team is in a vastly different time zone I haven't seen it work myself unfortunately. Not that it's absolutely impossible just that you're always going to be the guy out of sync with the team due to the small amount of overlap to work with anyone else. No amount of async communication will ever fix that the majority of the time anyone wants to ask you a simple question they'll have to wait until tomorrow (which for simple questions means they'll just spend time to try to figure it out themselves instead of ask you) and vice versa. Where I've seen vastly different time zones be successful is when the group is more evenly distributed and it turns into rolling pockets of collaboration rather than a stark handoff at the fray of the working day for each party. It doesn't so much matter if a particular time zone has most of the people just that for most of your work day it's possible for you to interact live with a few others the team and vice versa.
If the above doesn't seem possible you'll either have to find the unicorn answer which is going to be very specific to what your team does (e.g. maybe is there a role which takes almost exactly 1 FTE that doesn't actually need to be in the team as much as produce deliverables for them or maybe by sheer rare chance your group is willing and actually functions well with a majority of communication being async), find a way to come to terms with a 3rd shift job, or find a new position that matches your needs better.
If only one member of a team is in a vastly different time zone I haven't seen it work myself unfortunately. Not that it's absolutely impossible just that you're always going to be the guy out of sync with the team due to the small amount of overlap to work with anyone else. No amount of async communication will ever fix that the majority of the time anyone wants to ask you a simple question they'll have to wait until tomorrow (which for simple questions means they'll just spend time to try to figure it out themselves instead of ask you) and vice versa. Where I've seen vastly different time zones be successful is when the group is more evenly distributed and it turns into rolling pockets of collaboration rather than a stark handoff at the fray of the working day for each party. It doesn't so much matter if a particular time zone has most of the people just that for most of your work day it's possible for you to interact live with a few others the team and vice versa.
If the above doesn't seem possible you'll either have to find the unicorn answer which is going to be very specific to what your team does (e.g. maybe is there a role which takes almost exactly 1 FTE that doesn't actually need to be in the team as much as produce deliverables for them or maybe by sheer rare chance your group is willing and actually functions well with a majority of communication being async), find a way to come to terms with a 3rd shift job, or find a new position that matches your needs better.