Do you work remotely from another time zone (since COVID) - and how did you adjust?

I'm now six time zones distant from my company office, but have been doing this from long before Covid. My day usually ends before my colleagues reach their mid-day mark, but it doesn't make much difference. Typically I have one, informal meeting a week. Occasionally there is some meeting or call later than I would like but I just work a long day (and take some hour off on another day.) Because we all work from home we mostly communicate through chat messages and we overlap timezones for enough of the day to feel some "live" connection. They know I'm in a different part of the world and our hours are not the same, but it's anything but work of life or death importance; they'll have an answer or a comment on some late in the day (for them) issue before they sit down to work the next day which is plenty timely.

When I worked remotely full but time in the same time zone, I made it a point to keep to normal business hours. If I started or finished an hour off from my colleagues it didn't matter, but they knew that I was working roughly the same hours as them every day. If I had a personal appointment and worked late, I would mention it, but no one ever cared.

The Covid difference: my colleagues were mostly centered around my company's office and spent some portion of each week in that office. With Covid everyone worked from home full time and will down at least until autumn. Work from home policies which had grown more restrictive in the year before Covid have been relaxed of necessity; now the company is backtracking quite drastically on the importance of in-office collaboration. By good fortune they over-performed in 2020, against all expectation, and came to realize that a tight grip on monitoring employees in office paid off less than sending everyone home to work on their own. In communications, we share more off-topic messages and short chat conversations that grew out of something of a look-after-your-mental-health and work balance concern.

Do you have to do video conferences, OP? If so, that can be a pain. I work from home, but do have to get dressed up for the video stuff (including doing something with my hair, which can be unruly).

I think you will adjust and grow to like the quiet time in the morning and being done by early afternoon. It's only a 3 hour time difference. It's not that bad.

I did this for a few years. The drawbacks are:

1) Work starts as soon as you jump out of the bed. There is no wake-up time or anything. Usually I ended up not showering and just working straight through to 2:30 as meetings and work would take over.

2) Nobody gives a shit that you're on the West Coast. Expect 5 or 5:30am conf calls.

3) People think you started at 8 or 9am like they did, so the East Coasters will give you some work as you have a 'few hours left in the day still'. Bullshit. You have to cut them short with that or you will be taken advantage of.

However, not commuting and having your afternoons and evenings completely free is amazing.

R3 here - one more item - when there are half days or office closes early for a holiday, you're off even earlier. So our office would close at 2pm before holiday weekends - meaning you're of off the clock at 11am.

The rush of starting directly into work never is easy. And if you do decide to sleep in a bit more and start working at 6:30am, by the time you login, you're already feel very behind.

Oh, and my boss would text me shit on his way to work - at 7 or 7:30am, which was 4am my time. The text alerts from my phone would wake me up every time. And sometimes it was stuff he needed for a morning meeting, so you couldn't ignore them.

[quote] 3) People think you started at 8 or 9am like they did, so the East Coasters will give you some work as you have a 'few hours left in the day still'. Bullshit. You have to cut them short with that or you will be taken advantage of.

Good point!

R3 here - running my mouth again. What most likely will happen is that you will become an afternoon napper. Once you're done with work, I found myself going straight to the bedroom for a 45 min or 1 hour nap.

It actually wasn't bad - and energized me for the rest of the day/evening. Unless you have a TON of energy, I don't think you're going to go from working 5am to 2:30pm, then immediately go for a hike or work out.

Hell, you probably won't even have showered by then.

You have to be firm and level set with your boss/employer. If there's a 4 hour time difference between you and them, for example, they need to respect that. This should be common sense. I don't call you and wake you up at 4 in the morning your time, don't call/email me at 10pm my time when I'm out for dinner or a movie with my friends, or just getting to sleep.

I email people at odd hours but don't expect responses right away. Point is: it might be OK to send emails, just don't expect a response after quitting time or on weekends.

I am always amazed at how many people are almost enslaved by their employers.

Don’t mean this as a dig — but the whole concept of “having to respond to an email at 4 in the morning” is just awful - and I really feel for you guys.

For a number of years I was a global project manager with projects in various locations around the world and in both hemispheres. It only worked for me since my sleep schedule was always wacky, waking up at all hours of the night and not requiring a full 8 hours of sleep. Now retired, it wouldn't be a great adjustment to work in any time zone since my sleep schedule is still fairly random. The major negative is if you have a live-in partner or boyfriend - especially if they are prone to get angry when you have a 2:00 a.m. conference call. Yes, I am now single.

Please r7.

You cannot expect a business to bend to your wants. If it's an east coast business and that is how you were hired, and you make the choice to relocate to the west coast, the onus is on *you* to make the time difference work.

I settled a complicated estate on the West Coast pre-COVID and teleworkers my East Coast job. It was pretty simple—you need to negotiate when you’re available to East Coasters and when you do other stuff related to your job. Don’t be a jerky whiny west coaster—-people get sick of the weather talk and complaining about the hour.

R12 - to be fair though, weather is a prominent complaint and source of small talk on conference calls. "Did you get snow yet? It's coming your way!" "Is it cold where you are?"

It's silly, but invariably they will round robin to people in warmer climates and you're supposed to do what? Lie?

And East Coasters are the most entitled - I've rarely had any meetings start before 9am if an East Coast person schedules it. They get into work 'late' compared to the rest of the country and then when they leave, they expect everyone to respect their downtime.

I work in an Eastern time zone. But I was born an insomniac. My mom used to have to give me Benadryl starting when I was 4 yrs old so I could go to school. I'm 55 and always worked night shift (healthcare), but for the last 2 years I've worked for an insurance company 6am to 2:30 pm and I love it. I feel like I have so much more time. I work from home since Covid

No matter what I work, I'll always have to take a sleeping pill to get to bed.