I'm based in New Zealand and in previous years I was freelancing in Australia. I've done work for US clients on the west coast in (PST/PDT) and the timezone difference (it's about 4 hours difference from NZT) felt minimal and was in fact beneficial as it gave me focused uninterrupted work periods.
This year I did a lot of work for a client in Colorado (Mountain Time) and although they stated it was perfectly ok to contact them when a previously unidentified issue cropped up e.g. a bad API response, I felt awkward having to ask them early in their evenings and I suspect put some strain on the person who had contracted me.
I'm now talking with a potential client on the east coast and so of course there is less overlap time-wise but they want my skillset. I am naturally an early bird so that works in my favor. But I'm wondering what are good practices to alleviating any issues. My current thinking is:
- be up early and resolve questions / communicate first thing
- don't send questions at 6pm their time. Wait till it's much later and they get the question early when they wake up. In other words, have a red-zone when you don't send questions (unless of course there was something super-critical)