Hey Folks, What tool is remote companies ,who have employees distributed across time zones using to see each other availability ? Like something that shows who is available at what time relative to my current time. Available as in i don’t mean available for meetings , just generally working at this time. PS: I know people use shared calendar for it , but i was wondering if there was something else out there that people uses.

Contrary to what expectations are set for working in office, remote companies tend to work asynchronously and with very very few meetings. For example, Twist (https://twist.com/). Other than Google Calendar is a very good tool but nothing else. It is very important to not depend on timezones when working remotely because more you start mapping out people's schedule, more you realize there is no best time that makes everyone happy.

Slack + Calendars + Clockwise Also, working async means you don’t really need to worry about timezones.

Yes but when you need to get something from fellow developer who is in another time zone . We need to know if the guys is available or not to expect a response ? Or i am doing it wrong way ? Like you are working on a TASK that another developer had originally worked on and need some info asap.

For that sync communication, chances are that you're using Slack or MS Teams, and both show local time for that colleague so you can ping and expect reply accordingly.

@flat-morning-91037 Yeah thats what I usually do . Albeit i figured some guys in let’s say indian time zone are working based on PST time (Basically night shifts) so it kind of defeats the purpose. Though its not a Major issue , i was just wondering what other people uses.

Well, then they have a bigger problem to worry about. 😛

You can set availability in Google Calendar, which everyone can see.

If you need constant calls with another developer, you're probably doing it wrong. Features are tracked in issues which also contains a spec of what needs to be implemented. If the previous developer hasn't done that, or if your company doesn't use issues to track feature specifications, it needs to adopt some remote best practices.

We have a guide to do Remote right 😉 https://learn.gitlab.com/allremote/remote-playbook

Not sure if this satisfies your needs, but check out Zonely app by OnePlus. You can add your working hours and add your teammates, and then check availability and overlap across timezones