Twice a year, my colleague Doug Aitken posts in our announcements channel to warn everyone about the timezone chaos ahead.
Not every country switches between summer and standard time on the same day, and some don’t switch at all. For most people, this isn’t a problem, but in a fully distributed company with people in 82 countries, it becomes a real challenge. I’m not sure why, but it’s the kind of quirk that always makes me smile.
The European Union has debated ending the clock change for years without success. Personally, I don’t see the benefits, but from what I’ve read, we’ll keep changing our clocks until at least 2031.
If you are curious, here’s the message my colleague shares:
It’s time for my twice-annual TIME ping!
New Zealand, Australia, and Chile have already started it, and now it’s time (heh) for the many others to end – DST ends for some of us last Sunday in October or first Sunday in November, so either Sunday 26th OCTOBER 0100 UTC or Sunday 2nd NOVEMBER 0200 local.
That means for the week or two coming you may be an hour out from your usual meeting times with many of your colleagues. Remember Google Calendar invites are often set in specific timezone so meeting time may not change for you but it may for a colleague.
A useful color-coded list can be found here: Daylight saving time by country. Confused about time zones and how to figure things out?
Congratulations, as ever to the many countries (and the US states of Arizona & Hawaii!) who don’t observe DST; y’all clever.