The most extreme example I have is myself, in France, having calls with people in New Zealand. That's an 11-hour difference. Basically, we'd have them at 8 AM CEST, which is 7 PM NZDT.
8 AM is somewhat early by Paris standards (usual office day begins at 9 - 9:30, with many people coming in around 10) but it's still feasible. I don't know how the day is organized in NZ, but I'd assume being done at 8 PM is a bit late but still tolerable.
Exactly. So if it works for Europe with New Zealand, it should work at least as well with Asia.
You should be weary with Spain, though. Even though it's quite out West, they're still using Central European Time (same as Hungary / Poland in the East), which is completely absurd. Hell, even France shouldn't be using CET, but WET / GMT. Only Portugal uses WET, and you have to go East to Finland / the Baltics / Romania / Bulgaria / Greece to switch time zones again (EET / GMT + 2). [0] is a handy map of time zones in Europe.
> The problem comes when you try to make THAT compatible with the California as well, which we determined it's just not possible in my last company.
You mean a call involving the three at the same time? Yeah, I can't see how that could be reasonable for all parties involved.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Time_Zones_of_Europe.svg
It worked out for me because I worked 1PM to 11PM or so (my bosses weren't thrilled about it, but not a lot they could do), but I'd have been very unhappy if I was working a normal 8 - 5 or 9 - 6 day.
These days I live in Europe and won't work outside my standard hours, with very rare exceptions, backed up by some fairly strong laws (Germany, so not as strong as France, I think) and some interesting wording choices in my contract.
