Picture the following scene: You work from home, but more than that, you work remotely. You're no longer bound by contract to stay somewhere fixed and you decide to take off one day. You pack your bags, go to the airport, and decide to spend a few months in Europe, from hostel to hostel, Airbnb to Airbnb, while working and sightseeing.
Sounds like a hell of a dream, right? Don't get me wrong, it truly is. I have co-workers doing that right now and they are loving it. And as much as I love to look at the positive side of things, I wanna bring up a more realistic point of view of having such a wide-spread team.
Today I'll be focusing on different time zones and the relationship with different cultures.
You need to be available for the client
The clients I deal the most with are United States or Canada-based. Because of that, I need to be available to them during their working hours, or for as much of it as I can. I'm lucky to be in a timezone where I'm only ahead by one hour, but I have met with Scandinavian clients where I had to start my day one hour earlier when for them, it was already 2 p.m. I also work with teams based in Ukraine, as well as in India. They usually join my morning meetings at the end of their day, once joining a client call at almost midnight at their time.
You won't work at the same hours as everyone
If I have a problem to solve that I need their help with, I either prepare myself the night before, wake up at 3 a.m., or send a detailed message for them to get to the next day. My team leader is in UK time, so I have about half my day to reach out and talk to her. After that, I do have other people to get support from, but we all have to keep her timezone in mind and the opposite is also true. You gotta do what you gotta do, but sometimes, you'll have to make some sacrifices.
Cultural differences can hit harder than we think
We all know different cultures have different ways of solving problems, dealing with conflict, and getting along, but when confronted with it, we can be quick to assume things that aren't true, purely based on our own cultural bias. In general, and from my personal experience, European and East Asian cultures tend to be blunter than my own or most Latin ones I've come in contact with. Knowing that means I need to take things less personally when talking to them and know that they probably were trying to be direct and not rude. It gets easier with practice.
Summing thing up
I'm still completing my first month at this new company so I'm sure there will be more things to talk about the more I interact with different people.
Being able to get to know and work with people I wouldn't have the opportunity otherwise is one of my great professional and personal accomplishments. The more we widen our horizons and opens our minds to different perspectives, the more we have access to different frameworks and mindset and the more we grow.
But again, we need to put in the effort, otherwise, we might as well just stay where we are.
What is your experience like? What did you learn?
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