William Ong

I hate Timezones

Originally published on LinkedIn.

As we get closer to the end of the year, it reminds me of a tricky problem in engineering i recently encounter: timezones.

Indonesia is a good reminder of this. In one country alone, it has three timezones:

  1. WIB (UTC+7)
  2. WITA (UTC+8)
  3. WIT (UTC+9)

It sounds simple, until recently I need to ship something that says: “Activate this feature at 7–10 AM” across multiple cities in different timezones.

Any system that touches users across regions (with multiple timezones) eventually runs into the same question: whose 7 AM are we talking about?

I really hate timezone

So yes, while folks in Jakarta are still counting down, friends in Bali are already welcoming the new year an hour earlier. Happy New Year to everyone!