Youngha SungAs a remote full stack developer at Charles River Laboratories, I have privilege to work from any location as long as I have a secure network connection. I personally like to work from my home (DFW area in Texas) because it already has all the equipment and environment setup to be productive. In early 2022, my planned family trip was coming up for the duration of 2.5 months and CRL gave me an opportunity to work from the complete opposite side of the earth, South Korea. CRL and I wanted to try “working asynchronously” and see how effective and productive it would be and possibly allow others to do the same in the future.
Preparation and setting the work hours
Brandon Saunders, my manager, contacted HR team to make sure there’s no restriction for me to work from aboard for the entire duration. Depending on the employee’s employment status and the immigration status, HR restriction might vary, so this is very critical to check.
Before leaving the U.S. I wanted to make sure I can get the full technical support while I am working from South Korea. I called the IT Support team to make sure accessing VPN from South Korea is not blocked and there aren’t any other restrictions for working from South Korea.
Even though I was to work asynchronously, Brandon and I wanted to have some overlap between my work hours and the team’s work hour for daily sync-up and to minimize any communication gaps. South Korea time zone (KST) being GMT+9, meaning it’s 13 hours ahead of EST, it was almost impossible to find the overlapping hours as the day and nights are switching. Check below and see how the work hours from each time zone doesn’t work with the others.
- EST 9 am ~ 6 pm » KST 10 pm ~ 7 am (You work, I sleep)
- KST 9 am ~ 6 pm » EST 8 pm ~ 5 am (I work, you sleep)
We discussed many different options including me being a night owl and following the complete EST schedule. However, Brandon wanted me to have a healthy work/life balance and make sure I work asynchronously. We ended up deciding the work hours to be (in KST): 9 am to 4 pm for the day shift and 10 pm to 12 am for the night shift, utilizing the night shift for the daily sync-up with the team. Here’s a convenient online time converter tool we used for this planning.
Working from South Korea
The direct flight from the U.S. to South Korea takes about 14 hours and I wanted to have a good rest after the flight. So, I took an additional day off after my arrival and used it for resting and all the fun unpacking stuff. And working asynchronously began!
The first thing I had to do was to get through the jetlag and adjust to Korean time zone which was not so easy especially after I get a full of good Korean food for my lunch. For about a week, I used my time flexibly for the sake of adjusting to the time zone until I was completely adjusted. After that point and on, I tried to stick with my work hours to settle my daily routine and the rhythm. This is important for my productivity. But time to time, to accommodate my personal needs, I could use my day flexibly since there was no hard restriction that kept me locked to the work hours.
Day shift
I started my day with daily catch-up and go through my emails and chats. If there were any meetings I missed, I made sure I get the links to the recordings. After my daily catch-up was done, I watched the recordings of the meetings I missed. I set the playback speed to 1.25 or 1.5 (depending on who’s talking 😃) to save some time. After the daily catch-up and attending the meetings, I had a good To-Do list for the day and was able to set the priorities. This list was helpful later when I was syncing up with the team. One tip for setting the priority: prioritize any item that will need some feedback from other to shorten the feedback loop.
As I was working through out my day according to my prioritized To-Do list, I drafted any emails or questions on a separate note. Unless it was urgent and needed immediate attention, I used my night shift which is closer to the team’s work schedule, and sent out emails and posted the questions in the chat. This was my way of counter honoring others’ work hours.
Night shift
As I mentioned above, I sent out emails and posted questions from my note. If the team needed to reach out to me or vice versa for additional discussion or sync up, this was the perfect time and the only time. So, I had to use it wisely.
Pros and cons of working asynchronously
Having meetings throughout the day tend to interrupt my focus, and many times it could decrease the productivity. Working asynchronously ensured me to have an un-interrupted focus time and for sure it increased the productivity. I could get up-to-dated with most of the things via emails, chats or meeting recordings. I had full control of my days and could use my time flexibly to accommodate my needs to take care of personal stuff.
However, since I was disconnected from others for most of the times, it was hard to contribute to some of the discussions and decisions. Also, some discussions needed multiple rounds of communications and ended up spending couple of days when it could have been much shorter if it wasn’t async.
Conclusion
Overall, asynchronous work was a very good and positive experience for me and definitely could see my productivity go up. I recommend to others to try out the async work if the situation allows. For some people who are more key decision makers, you will need to work with your team to overcome the communication and decision-making barriers. But I am pretty sure there are many ways we can try to make it work for all types of positions.