---
title: "A Software Engineer's Guide to Working Across Time Zones"
description: "Working across time zones can make live collaboration difficult when teammates are nine to 12 hours apart, as described by a developer based in Singapore. The proposed alternative is to treat much of the work as asynchronous and deliberately document progress, blockers, decisions, and context. Examples include taking turns across working hours, annotating non-obvious pull request changes, posting end-of-day summaries with links or investigation notes, and recording meetings with agendas, key decisions, and action items. During Shopify's Hack Days prototype work on Linkpop, a Singapore-based frontend developer handed off updates before sleeping while North American teammates extended backend functionality and responded to blockers. The post concludes that these practices become habits that support handoffs, reduce back-and-forth, preserve information for absent teammates and future reference, and can provide longer uninterrupted focus periods."
---

# A Software Engineer's Guide to Working Across Time Zones

[Shopify](https://yomu.fyi/company/shopify) · 2023-10-18 · Oct 27, 2022

**Type:** Tutorial

## Summary

Working across time zones can make live collaboration difficult when teammates are nine to 12 hours apart, as described by a developer based in Singapore. The proposed alternative is to treat much of the work as asynchronous and deliberately document progress, blockers, decisions, and context. Examples include taking turns across working hours, annotating non-obvious pull request changes, posting end-of-day summaries with links or investigation notes, and recording meetings with agendas, key decisions, and action items. During Shopify's Hack Days prototype work on Linkpop, a Singapore-based frontend developer handed off updates before sleeping while North American teammates extended backend functionality and responded to blockers. The post concludes that these practices become habits that support handoffs, reduce back-and-forth, preserve information for absent teammates and future reference, and can provide longer uninterrupted focus periods.

## Context

A developer based in Singapore works with teammates roughly nine to 12 hours away, leaving a slim window for in-person calls unless someone gives up sleep. The post addresses the resulting challenges of cross-time-zone collaboration and the need to stay aligned when colleagues are not working simultaneously.

## Approach / What changed

Use deliberate asynchronous collaboration: hand work over across working hours, explain non-obvious pull request changes, post end-of-day summaries and investigation notes, and record meetings with agendas, decisions, and action items. The post presents these documentation practices as habits that make handoffs and future reference easier.

## Takeaways

- Handing off updates, blockers, and attempted solutions before logging off lets teammates in another time zone continue work while the original contributor is asleep.
- Annotating non-straightforward pull request changes can reduce clarification cycles and help catch leftover debug statements or typos during review.
- Meeting recordings, agendas, notes, decisions, and action items help teammates who cannot attend follow the discussion and understand what needs to happen next.

**Tags:** [Code Review](https://yomu.fyi/topic/code-review), [Developer Experience](https://yomu.fyi/topic/developer-experience), [Remote Work](https://yomu.fyi/topic/remote-work)

- Source: [Shopify](https://shopify.engineering/a-software-engineers-guide-to-working-across-time-zones)
- Source URL: https://shopify.engineering/a-software-engineers-guide-to-working-across-time-zones
- Ingested by Yomu: 2026-08-30T13:38:03.958Z

[Read original post](https://shopify.engineering/a-software-engineers-guide-to-working-across-time-zones)