What is the Time Zone Friction Score?

A 0–100 rating of how easy a distributed team is to work across synchronously — higher is easier. It's driven by how many hours per day everyone is simultaneously inside their working window: 5+ shared hours scores 100 (Effortless), a couple of hours is Manageable/Strained, and a team with no hour that suits everyone scores below 40 (Broken).

Who is the 'lone wolf'?

The team member most isolated from everyone else's hours — specifically, the person whose removal would free up the most shared overlap for the rest of the team. It's flagged only when dropping them would gain at least an hour, so it points to a genuine outlier (often a hiring or async-workflow decision), not a minor stretch.

What happens when no common window exists?

The score drops into 'Broken' and the tool shows the best near-miss: the longest window covering the most participants, and names who's outside their working hours — so you know whose day to flex, or that it's time to go async.

How does it handle daylight saving time and custom hours?

Offsets are computed for the specific reference date via the IANA timezone database, so DST is automatic; change the date to plan ahead. Every row has its own from/to times, so early birds, night owls and part-time schedules are modeled per person.

Can I share the result with my team?

Yes — copy a permalink that encodes every city and working window, or copy a ready-to-paste proposal listing the meeting time in everyone's local time.

Remote Teams · Timezone Parity

How much timezone friction does your team have?

Enter where each teammate works and their hours. Get a Friction Score for the whole team, the exact golden hour everyone shares, and a flag for the lone wolf — the member whose hours isolate them from the rest. For deciding who to hire and where.

Team Timezone Friction Scorer

Add each team member's city and working hours. Get a Friction Score, the exact golden hour where everyone's online, and a flag for the lone wolf — the member most isolated from the rest.

City From To

10 / 100 Broken friction score — higher is easier

0h of shared working time per day · 2/4 can be online together

⚠ No common window

0 minutes overlap · —

No slot works for everyone within their hours. Try widening working hours or removing a city.

High friction? Three ways to fix a scattered team:

Deel → Remote.com → Loom → SurfOffice →

Hire in a friendlier timezone, go async, or meet IRL. Links may be affiliate links.

How the overlap is found

Each person's working day (e.g. 09:00–18:00 local) is converted to UTC using their timezone's offset for the chosen date — which automatically accounts for Daylight Saving Time. The tool then finds the longest stretch of UTC time during which every participant is simultaneously inside their local working hours. That intersection is the golden hour.

overlap = ⋂ᵢ [ workStartᵢ − offsetᵢ , workEndᵢ − offsetᵢ ] (mod 24h)

Tips & FAQ

No common window? Widen one person's hours or drop the hardest timezone.
Offsets are DST-accurate for the selected date — change the date to plan ahead.
Fractional zones (India +5:30, Nepal +5:45) and midnight-wrapping windows are handled.
"Next day" means the local clock has rolled past midnight for that person.

For AI agents & schedulers

Scheduling and hiring/team-design bots can resolve a team in one request: GET /api/meeting.json?zones=Europe/London,America/New_York,Australia/Sydney. The response returns the golden-hour window (UTC + each local time, or overlap: null with the best partial) plus a friction block: the 0–100 score, grade, daily shared hours and the loneWolf. Declared in /.well-known/mcp.json and described in /llms.txt.