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Comment by rakoo | Hacker News Reader

European here, and the 6PM-12AM window is the one I feel the most productive in. I guess it will be a big change for a majority of people but I would definitely be interested by this.

Moreover when I work, I work, so if the sun is already down I'm ok with it; when it's up I can do all the active parts of my day that are more enjoyable during the day.

Still, it's not perfect. I don't think it would be that big of a deal for social life, because most events happen during the weekend anyway, but you'd still be expected to not be available for anything. Hopefully this is just the first phase for Quora, and they'll realize at some point that the whole point of working remote is that everything is asynchronous and synchronous is the exception

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Doesn’t work for families. 6pm - 9pm is primetime for kids. But who cares about them oldies, right? /s

Many oldies don't have families.

Can’t tell if you’re mildly trolling or serious.

The obvious point is that enough people in EU have children/families to make these hours a huge burden if not outright unworkable.

Presumably they think "workers in EU timezones will have to work unsociable hours" is a more generous policy than "we don't hire workers in EU timezones"

Of course, policies like "no cross-continent teams" or "no meetings whatsoever" would be even better - but that's an even bigger corporate re-organisation.

Definitely generous towards the taxman! All that extra taxable on unsociable hours...

Why choose to work there from Europe if you have such constraints?

Indeed, I guess Quora will become (even more of) a singles-fest in Europe.

My point is that as a general model, it fails hard here.

The current general model for US companies is to not hire people in Europe at all. That fails even harder.

Meh, plenty of companies open European subsidiaries every day. Google, Twitter and Facebook are massive in Ireland.

Becoming a multinational company with foreign subsidiaries is a whole different ballpark than hiring a one-off foreign employee, though.

And those employees aren’t technically employed by US companies. They’re employed by Irish companies that are owned by US companies.

The vast majority of US tech companies are not multinationals and aren’t going to consider incorporating overseas to hire anyone.

Also not easy to stay in touch with friends, which is even more important when all your colleagues are across the ocean.

When I managed teams with flex hours, several parents explicitly preferred to work 4PM to midnight because they could spend the morning with their kids while their spouse worked their day job.

If the working hours are presented up front and agreed upon by all, I don’t see why this is any more problematic than any other shift work. There are a lot of programmers out there who are naturally night owls and would prefer those hours anyway.

Having direct experience with this, I can say that it’s not only not a problem, it’s a bonus for many. Including people with children.

Let the people decide what’s best for themselves and choose jobs accordingly. Don’t shame companies who don’t fit your own personal ideals of working hours.

> Don’t shame companies who don’t fit your own personal ideals of working hours.

It's not "my" ideal - I don't set school hours. In fact, unsociable hours are defined in law, for many, many reasons.

Quora's approach is shortsighted and, in my opinion, fundamentally ageist towards their European workers - and I say that as someone who definitely prefers to work afternoons.

Trust me, there is demand for programming jobs that work night-owl hours. A surprising number of programmers loathe morning work schedules. If Quora wants to create a job for them, there’s nothing wrong with that.

You don’t have to work there. You don’t have to work those hours. But please don’t shame a company for creating an opportunity for the people who voluntarily prefer those hours.

The alternative isn’t that Quora is forced to let European employees work their own schedules while everyone else has to follow the rules. The alternative is that Quora simply decides not to hire in Europe.

> The alternative is that Quora simply decides not to hire in Europe

Well then, so much for competition for best talent and all that jazz. I'm sure Quora's competitors will be happy to pick up the slack.

> Trust me, there is demand for programming jobs that work night-owl hours.

That is not the point. There is demand for night-time-guard jobs too. That doesn't mean it's a particularly appealing job, or that night-time guards are the best guards, or that regular guards won't be pissed off when you tell them from now on it's night-time shifts only, or that society as a whole is happy to have all these night-time guards around.

It seems like a fair compromise to say “you have to work our hours because we believe it’s important to have this overlap” rather than “sorry we’re only hiring in North and South America”

People complain about this. People would complain if they said they only hire in North American timezones. That said, a big window of synchronous communications between US West Coast and Europe is tough. East Coast to Europe is much more doable on a day-to-day basis.

I was actually having a conversation with someone I know in the UK about this a while back. His feeling was that it was a something of an advantage for a company that wants both a large US and a European presence to be East Coast-based for this reason.

> East Coast-based for this reason.

Or anywhere east of Chicago roughly (a large chunk of US/Canada is in Eastern time).

Even Chicago (Central Time) isn't too bad.

It starts getting iffy with Pacific and Mountain Time zones and CET.

> When I managed teams with flex hours, several parents explicitly preferred to work 4PM to midnight because they could spend the morning with their kids while their spouse worked their day job.

This seems like it would be good for the younger children and then invert once they started attending school.

> them oldies

Actually the real “oldies” are paying for their kid’s college tuition now.

Same, i do most of my work in those hours (amsterdam), being synced with the US is a nice bonus.

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