<story><title>Time to Dump Time Zones</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/opinion/sunday/time-to-dump-time-zones.html?_r=0</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>trjordan</author><text>Perhaps Hackers News is the wrong audience to suffer this problem, but coordinating meetings between companies (i.e., sales calls) is a mess. When a call winds down and you&amp;#x27;ve got two people on the phone coordinating their calendars, there&amp;#x27;s this hilarious, awkward dance that happens.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Great, sounds like we have a plan. When should we touch base again?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Let&amp;#x27;s aim for Monday. How&amp;#x27;s your afternoon?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Monday is no good, but Tuesday morning is free.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Um, mornings are no good for me, I&amp;#x27;m on the west coast. I could do anything after 10am your time.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;OK, 1pm works.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;1pm your time, great.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Oh, no, I meant 10am your time, 1pm eastern.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Oh, right, ok. Great, I&amp;#x27;ll send a meeting invite.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Time zones make this SO INSUFFERABLE. I&amp;#x27;m in the Bay Area now, and everybody still reverts to ET just to speak about the same thing. I actually have a biweekly call with people in DC, New York, Chicago, and SF, and it&amp;#x27;s hell to try to move by an hour. Everybody ends up speaking relative language, about &amp;quot;push it back an hour&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;same time tomorrow?&amp;quot;. There&amp;#x27;s still going to be problems with the east coast thinking 10am is a good time to meet, or people who are on the hook to spend money dragging their feet for no reason, but I would love to get everybody working on the same system.&lt;p&gt;(As a side note, meeting invites that work over email are god&amp;#x27;s gift companies. Getting on the conference call at the wrong time is remarkably rare, and nobody ever blames time zones, because software takes care of the problem once you&amp;#x27;ve picked the initial time.)</text></item><item><author>darawk</author><text>Hmm...this is an interesting idea. However, the core of the argument seems to be this:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; “The economy — that’s all of us — would receive a permanent ‘harmonization dividend’ ”— the efficiency benefits that come from a unified time zone.&lt;p&gt;But this editorial is pretty light on actually supporting that. The basic argument seems to be that it reduces &amp;#x27;translation costs&amp;#x27;. But..does it? What about the benefits of being able to refer to times without having to localize them? If my friend on the other side of the country says &amp;quot;I woke up at 9 this morning&amp;quot;, I have a pretty good idea of what that means. If we used this new system, i&amp;#x27;d have to mentally translate.&lt;p&gt;In terms of scheduling things, it would get easier in some ways and likely harder in others. If say, I want to schedule a conference call at 3, yes, 3 is the same time for everyone, but i&amp;#x27;d still have to do some mental sanity checks to ensure that that time is reasonable for everyone who might be participating.&lt;p&gt;Overall, is there really an efficiency gain to be had here? I&amp;#x27;m not taking the firm position that there isn&amp;#x27;t, btw. Just a bit skeptical and curious to hear a better argument in its favor if anyone has got one.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nikatwork</author><text>This might be useful: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.timeanddate.com&amp;#x2F;worldclock&amp;#x2F;meeting.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.timeanddate.com&amp;#x2F;worldclock&amp;#x2F;meeting.html&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Time to Dump Time Zones</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/opinion/sunday/time-to-dump-time-zones.html?_r=0</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>trjordan</author><text>Perhaps Hackers News is the wrong audience to suffer this problem, but coordinating meetings between companies (i.e., sales calls) is a mess. When a call winds down and you&amp;#x27;ve got two people on the phone coordinating their calendars, there&amp;#x27;s this hilarious, awkward dance that happens.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Great, sounds like we have a plan. When should we touch base again?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Let&amp;#x27;s aim for Monday. How&amp;#x27;s your afternoon?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Monday is no good, but Tuesday morning is free.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Um, mornings are no good for me, I&amp;#x27;m on the west coast. I could do anything after 10am your time.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;OK, 1pm works.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;1pm your time, great.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Oh, no, I meant 10am your time, 1pm eastern.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Oh, right, ok. Great, I&amp;#x27;ll send a meeting invite.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Time zones make this SO INSUFFERABLE. I&amp;#x27;m in the Bay Area now, and everybody still reverts to ET just to speak about the same thing. I actually have a biweekly call with people in DC, New York, Chicago, and SF, and it&amp;#x27;s hell to try to move by an hour. Everybody ends up speaking relative language, about &amp;quot;push it back an hour&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;same time tomorrow?&amp;quot;. There&amp;#x27;s still going to be problems with the east coast thinking 10am is a good time to meet, or people who are on the hook to spend money dragging their feet for no reason, but I would love to get everybody working on the same system.&lt;p&gt;(As a side note, meeting invites that work over email are god&amp;#x27;s gift companies. Getting on the conference call at the wrong time is remarkably rare, and nobody ever blames time zones, because software takes care of the problem once you&amp;#x27;ve picked the initial time.)</text></item><item><author>darawk</author><text>Hmm...this is an interesting idea. However, the core of the argument seems to be this:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; “The economy — that’s all of us — would receive a permanent ‘harmonization dividend’ ”— the efficiency benefits that come from a unified time zone.&lt;p&gt;But this editorial is pretty light on actually supporting that. The basic argument seems to be that it reduces &amp;#x27;translation costs&amp;#x27;. But..does it? What about the benefits of being able to refer to times without having to localize them? If my friend on the other side of the country says &amp;quot;I woke up at 9 this morning&amp;quot;, I have a pretty good idea of what that means. If we used this new system, i&amp;#x27;d have to mentally translate.&lt;p&gt;In terms of scheduling things, it would get easier in some ways and likely harder in others. If say, I want to schedule a conference call at 3, yes, 3 is the same time for everyone, but i&amp;#x27;d still have to do some mental sanity checks to ensure that that time is reasonable for everyone who might be participating.&lt;p&gt;Overall, is there really an efficiency gain to be had here? I&amp;#x27;m not taking the firm position that there isn&amp;#x27;t, btw. Just a bit skeptical and curious to hear a better argument in its favor if anyone has got one.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pbhjpbhj</author><text>Aviators&amp;#x2F;Military solve that by using Zulu time I believe (ie UTC).</text></comment>