The Hidden Costs of Running a Global Engineering Team and Recipes for Mitigation

I wish someone had told me this before I started managing global engineering teams:

The promise of 24/7 development across time zones comes at a steep cost to your execution speed.

Yes, I know it sounds great on paper - more talent, broader coverage, a global workforce. But after managing distributed teams for five years, I’ve reached an uncomfortable conclusion: teams working in the same region consistently outperform those spread across multiple time zones, regardless of whether they’re remote or office-based.

I’ve seen this firsthand at Getaround, where we’ve operated across France and throughout the US, with teams concentrated in SF and LA. And while we’ve tried every trick in the book to make it work better, I’ll tell you straight up: working across time zones is inherently problematic. The best we can do is reduce the damage. Here’s what I’ve learned.

Where I’m Coming From

Let me give you some context about my experience. I’ve spent roughly two-thirds of my career in an office, with the rest split between fully remote and hybrid setups. I’ve managed globally distributed teams for the past five years and remote teams since I first started managing. And no, this isn’t going to be another remote vs. in-office debate - neither approach is universally superior. It depends entirely on your team and what they need to succeed.

Here’s something important to note: I didn’t actively choose to build global teams. Instead, like many leaders, I inherited this challenge through acquisitions. In fact, my own journey at Getaround began when they acquired the French company I was working for. Since then, we’ve gone through multiple acquisitions, each adding new time zones and cultural dynamics to navigate. This experience has given me a unique perspective on both sides of the equation - being the “acquired” team trying to integrate into a larger organization, and later, being the one helping other acquired teams integrate successfully.

Through all of this, I’ve developed a strong preference for keeping people within easy travel distance of their nearest office - no more than 3-5 hours¹. This isn’t about control; it’s about making in-person collaboration possible when it really matters. This becomes especially critical when you’re trying to integrate teams after acquisitions, where structured onboarding and the ability to build strong personal relationships can make or break your long-term success.

The Real Problems (And Why They’re Worse Than You Think)

1. Synchronous Work Becomes Impossible

Here’s a hard truth about distributed teams that nobody wants to admit: real-time collaboration simply breaks down, and no amount of fancy tools can fix this. Sure, you’ll hear about how Slack, Notion, and other async tools solve everything, but let me tell you what actually happens:

That quick question that should take five minutes to resolve? It now stretches into hours or days of back-and-forth. The sense of urgency that drives projects forward just evaporates. You end up with massive documentation that nobody really reads, created by teams desperately trying to avoid yet another meeting.

Simple decisions that should take 30 minutes turned into multi-day sagas. By the time you got an answer to your question, the context had changed so much you needed to ask new questions.

And here’s the really insidious part: your most dedicated team members will try to bridge this gap by sacrificing their personal lives. They’ll take calls at 10 PM or wake up at 5 AM to sync with another region. I’ve seen it work in the short term, but it always, always leads to burnout.

Don’t build your operational model around expecting people to sacrifice their well-being - it’s not just wrong, it’s unsustainable.

2. Time Zone Gaps Are Deal-Breakers

Let me break down exactly how time differences mess with your team’s effectiveness:

A 3-hour gap (think New York to San Francisco) is manageable. Teams can still find enough overlap to get real work done together.

A 6-hour gap (New York to Paris) starts breaking things. Someone’s always sacrificing their schedule, and a one-day delay easily turns into two.

A 9-hour gap (Los Angeles to Paris)? This is where things fall apart completely. At Getaround, we lived this reality. Simple decisions that should take 30 minutes turned into multi-day sagas. By the time you got an answer to your question, the context had changed so much you needed to ask new questions.

3. The Economics Are Harder Than They Look

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room: cost savings.

Many companies chase the myth of the ‘$10k/year engineer’, but the reality hits different.

When companies optimize purely for cost, they end up needing way more oversight - more project management, more QA reviews, more micromanagement. Suddenly, those salary savings start looking pretty thin when you factor in all the extra overhead.

And here’s where it gets really interesting: many companies try to shortcut this by using outsourcing agencies or contractors instead of building their own teams. Good agencies charge premium rates (goodbye, cost savings), while cheaper ones deliver work that needs so much rework you might as well have done it twice. Even with skilled contractors, you’re constantly fighting knowledge loss as people cycle through your projects.

Building a quality engineering team takes time and investment. Even fantastic engineers need months to really understand your codebase, learn your tools, and build effective relationships with teammates. This investment only makes sense when you’re building lasting teams, not cycling through contractors.

Some companies do make the economics work, but it requires serious scale, organizational maturity, and real commitment from headquarters to invest in developing talent and leadership in each region. You need to build complete engineering centers, not just chase cheap talent.

4. Meetings Are a Special Kind of Hell

Look, sometimes you just need meetings. And that’s when time zones become truly painful:

Someone always suffers - either your US team is dragging themselves to 6 AM calls, or your EU team is staying online until 8 PM. Some companies try to be “fair” by rotating these painful meeting times. Congratulations, now everyone’s miserable part of the time.

Sure, you can record meetings and write detailed notes, but watching a recording at 1.5x speed isn’t the same as being in the room. Technical decisions that needed quick back-and-forth discussions turns into long, drawn-out processes.

5. Your Team Structure Gets Weird

Time zones force you into organizational compromises that nobody wants to admit to:

Teams naturally cluster by time zone to minimize pain, creating silos. You try to minimize dependencies between regions, which sounds good until you realize you’re actually reducing valuable collaboration. In one of our team, our backend and mobile teams ended up working more independently after acquisition - exactly the opposite of what you want in a high-performing engineering organization.

6. Cultural Differences Amplify Everything

Here’s something that often gets overlooked: different time zones usually mean different cultures, and this affects everything:

Some teams are direct; others prefer context and politeness. Written messages that seem perfectly clear to one team come across completely different to another. Even basic things like how to disagree or make decisions vary dramatically between regions.

I’ve seen teams struggle for months because nobody wanted to address these differences directly. The result? Chronic misalignment and weak team cohesion.

7. The Career Impact Nobody Talks About

Let’s be honest about how global teams affect careers:

Leadership opportunities naturally concentrate in HQ time zones. Remote teams often become second-class citizens in key discussions. Mentorship suffers when it can’t happen in real time. Important projects tend to land with teams closer to headquarters.

At Getaround, we tried hard to balance opportunities across regions, but reality is stubborn: people in the HQ time zone inevitably had better access to key discussions and more visibility with leadership.

How to Do This Right

If you’re considering global expansion, here’s the approach I’ve found most effective:

Start Local

Build your core team around headquarters, focusing on people within 3-5 hours of travel time. This creates a strong foundation where:

• Teams can gather when it matters
• Collaboration happens naturally
• Time zones align
• Cultural context stays consistent

If You Must Expand

When you need to grow beyond your region (whether for talent, market presence, or other reasons):

1. Build complete teams, not scattered hires
2. Send your best people to new regions for several months to:
   • Set up good practices
   • Transfer culture
   • Build lasting relationships
3. Keep teams as independent as possible
4. Try to stay within 3 time zones of existing locations
5. Create explicit decision-making frameworks that work asynchronously

This creates a natural two-tier model:

• Within regions: Teams collaborate easily
• Between regions: Teams have clear protocols for working together

Look, global expansion isn’t inherently bad, but it’s often sold as a simple cost-saving measure when the reality is far messier. The hidden costs - in speed, team cohesion, and career growth - usually outweigh the apparent benefits.

The decision to go global deserves careful consideration - you’re not just changing time zones, you’re permanently rewiring how your organization thinks, builds, and grows.