Time zone meeting planner

Find a time that is fair

With a team spread across continents, there is rarely a perfect hour. Aim for a window where everyone is awake and within reasonable working hours, shown as green in the planner. If nothing is green for everyone, pick the hour that is only early or late (yellow) for most people, and rotate who takes the awkward slot so the same teammate is not always the one up at night.

Steps for a clean invite

1. Choose the date and time in the place you are in, or where the host is based.
2. Add each teammate’s city and check the colored dots for every place.
3. If a day shift shows (+1 day or -1 day), say the date in the invite as well as the time.
4. Press “Copy a link to share” and paste it into the invite. Everyone who opens it sees the same moment in their own time zone.

Mistakes that cause missed meetings

• Writing “EST” in summer. New York is on EDT then. Naming a city (“3 PM New York”) avoids the problem, which is why the planner works with cities.
• Forgetting daylight saving. Clocks change on different dates in different countries, so the gap between two cities can shift by an hour for a few weeks a year. The planner applies the rules for the date you choose.
• Sending only a UTC offset. “UTC+2” tells people nothing about their own clock. A shared link does.
• Skipping the date. A 9 PM meeting for you can be tomorrow for a teammate in Asia.

Working across time zones

Many remote teams keep live meetings to a few hours a week and move the rest to written updates, so no one has to attend at midnight. When you apply for remote roles, look for the working hours or overlap a job asks for, for example four hours of overlap with US Eastern time. Browse remote jobs, or look at roles by field and by country to find teams in your region. You can also see which companies hire the most remote workers.