> Why can't they, for instance, simply declare that school/offices open at 10am instead of 9am for six designated months every year instead of imposing this adjustment on the entire world.
If they did that, you'd still be stuck shifting your schedule when they change their working hours.
In the most simplest scenario -- once a recurring meeting is fixed at 10:30 AM eastern STANDARD time, say, -- no schedule change is needed all-year-long if we dont tamper with the clock.
It is just that US worker -- due to their own convenience -- decides to show up in their office at 9AM for six months and 10am for other other six months of the year. Recurring meeting does not need to change at all.
The adjustment , if any, is all on US side. And for local season / climate reasons which has nothing to do with the remote team members, and so the remote team members elsewhere in the world dont need to change anything at all.
Just dont tamper with the clock and things will be much more simple.
>> If they did that, you'd still be stuck shifting your schedule when they change their working hours.
No -- we do not want to link our meetings to the changing office hours. We just want a fixed time on a clock fixed clock. Pick a time that works throughout the year for both teams. Like 10.30 AM EST in my example above.
Current the meetings are "fixed time" but on a moving clock -- in reality the meetings shift around but US folks move their clocks to "simulate" for themselves that they are always having their daily meeting "at 10AM" -- they achieve this illusion by inflicting pain on themselves as well as rest of the world. We would love if they can leave us out of this forced dance :)
Most of my life does not involve coordinating across timezones.
You're suggesting that twice every year, we change the times that retailers, offices, government agencies, broadway theaters, restaurants, roads, schools, and so on open and close. Schools alter class schedules and trains modify departure times. Also, we all reset our alarms, because we'll need to wake up at different times anyway.
It makes so much more sense to just change the clocks!
And yes, all of these things would need to change, because they all revolve around the typical work schedule! Parents bring children to school before heading to work. Public transit runs more frequently during rush hour.
There is a discussion to be had about whether we should be shifting our schedules in the first place. But as long as we're shifting schedules, it makes so much more sense to just change the damn clocks!
P.S. Most people don't have white collar jobs! Construction workers, janitors, mechanics and so on don't ever work across timezones.
P.P.S. I'm okay with nixing the time change as long as we don't end up on permanent daylights savings! However, permanent daylights savings is my nightmare.
Or only the people who it actually affects make any such adjustment?
Currently the shop closes at 8pm and it's dark by 4pm; in Summer it closes at 8pm still (on +1 time) and it's dark at what 11pm or later? Explain your point again?
If school starts at 9AM EST for half the year and at 10AM EST for the other half, then people who drop their children before work will be available at 10:30AM for half the year, and will not for the other half.
If there is a certain time that really does work for everyone, then DST doesn't really affect it. At worse, it requires a bit of rescheduling in the calendar if the meeting was set by someone in a DST country. If the meeting was set by someone in India, it will even get automatically adjusted in everyone else's calendar. So DST itself is not actually making things difficult for you, it's only people's habits changing with winter/summer that makes things difficult.
And note, I have direct experience with all of this, working in Romania with colleagues from California and Kolkata with at least three recurring syncups with all three of us per week.
Yes if the meeting host is in a country that does not observe DST/summertime ... then this problem kind of solves itself. Then only those whose local clock dances around the year need to dance around to match :)
Outlook and calendar apps should probably make this a feature: "do not move this meeting for DST/summertime" (even if the host is in US/EU). Make it opt-in initially and a couple of years later make it opt-out (default) choice.
On a lighter note ... recurring meetings tagged to "dynamic time zones" should be allowed only after hosts "agree" to a disclaimer that they have consulted other participants and have their consent :D (a little like recording with two-party consent)
You seem to put very heavy emphasis on the precise recorded time of a recurring meeting in everyone's calendar. In my experience, this is mostly irrelevant: the time of a recurring meeting is often renegotiated when circumstances change for a big enough swathe of participants, such as schedule changes in the more northern/souther latitudes as winter&summer approach.
That's a good thing, and way better than the current state of things. Let the federal government pick summer/winter hours, and everyone can adjust or not as they see fit.
If they did that, you'd still be stuck shifting your schedule when they change their working hours.