This is a tangent to your tangent, but are you still based in Australia? If so, how do you find Rethink’s remote by default set up with the time difference?
For context, I considered applying for the same role, but ultimately didn’t because at the time I was stuck working from Australia with all my colleagues in GMT+0 timezone (thanks covid), and the combination of daytime isolation/late night meetings were making me pretty miserable. Is Rethink better at managing these issues?
Just want to say that Rethink Priorities is committed to being able to successfully integrate remote Australians and we’d be excited to have more APAC applicants in our future hiring rounds!
Good question. And sorry to hear you had that miserable situation—hope things are better for you now!
First, I should note that I’m in Western Australia, so things would presumably be somewhat different for people in the Eastern states. Also, of course, different people’s needs, work styles, etc. differ.
I’ve been meeting with US people in my mornings, which is working well because I wake up around 7am and start working around 8, while the people I’m meeting with are more night-owl-ish. And I’ve been meeting with people in the UK/Europe in my evenings (around 5-9pm), which I’m also fine with.
Though it is tricky to get all 3 sets of time zones in the same meeting. Usually one of us has to be up early or late. But so far those sort of group meetings have just been something like once a fortnight, so it’s been tolerable.
And other than meetings, time zones aren’t seeming to really matter for my job; most of my work and most of my communication with colleagues (via slack, google doc comments, email, etc) doesn’t require being up at the same time as someone else. (I imagine that, in general, this is true for many research roles and less true for e.g. operations roles.)
Though again, I’ve only been at Rethink for a month so far. And I’m planning to move to Oxford in March. If I was in Australia permanently, perhaps time zone issues for team meetings would become more annoying.
Btw, I also worked for Convergence Analysis (based in UK/Europe) from March to ~August from Australia. That was even easier, because there were never three quite different time zones to deal with (no US employees).
Hey Michael,
This is a tangent to your tangent, but are you still based in Australia? If so, how do you find Rethink’s remote by default set up with the time difference?
For context, I considered applying for the same role, but ultimately didn’t because at the time I was stuck working from Australia with all my colleagues in GMT+0 timezone (thanks covid), and the combination of daytime isolation/late night meetings were making me pretty miserable. Is Rethink better at managing these issues?
Cheers!
Just want to say that Rethink Priorities is committed to being able to successfully integrate remote Australians and we’d be excited to have more APAC applicants in our future hiring rounds!
Hey Harriet,
Good question. And sorry to hear you had that miserable situation—hope things are better for you now!
First, I should note that I’m in Western Australia, so things would presumably be somewhat different for people in the Eastern states. Also, of course, different people’s needs, work styles, etc. differ.
I’ve been meeting with US people in my mornings, which is working well because I wake up around 7am and start working around 8, while the people I’m meeting with are more night-owl-ish. And I’ve been meeting with people in the UK/Europe in my evenings (around 5-9pm), which I’m also fine with.
Though it is tricky to get all 3 sets of time zones in the same meeting. Usually one of us has to be up early or late. But so far those sort of group meetings have just been something like once a fortnight, so it’s been tolerable.
And other than meetings, time zones aren’t seeming to really matter for my job; most of my work and most of my communication with colleagues (via slack, google doc comments, email, etc) doesn’t require being up at the same time as someone else. (I imagine that, in general, this is true for many research roles and less true for e.g. operations roles.)
Though again, I’ve only been at Rethink for a month so far. And I’m planning to move to Oxford in March. If I was in Australia permanently, perhaps time zone issues for team meetings would become more annoying.
Btw, I also worked for Convergence Analysis (based in UK/Europe) from March to ~August from Australia. That was even easier, because there were never three quite different time zones to deal with (no US employees).
Thanks for the detailed answer—this actually sounds pretty doable!