I know it might not sound like a networking question based on the title, but we're a network engineering team and having an issue I believe is fairly common for larger/international organisations. I'm curious how other network engineering teams in the same situation make this work.
Two thirds of the team is based in one US location, the other third of the team is based in one EU location. Everyone in the team reports to a single team manager who is in the US. This means that the EU team reports directly to a remote manager. There is a 6 hour time difference between the two teams. This provides effectively a 2.5 hour window each day for collaboration. By the time the US team rolls up at 9am, it's already 3pm in the EU. By the time the US team has their coffee and gets settled and ready for the day around 10am, it's already 4pm and the EU team heads home at 5:30pm EU time. This isn't a lot of overlap to get shit done, and most people get into their groove later in the day, not first thing in the morning.
Additionally, there is a skills/focus disparity between the US and EU teams. They US team is largely focused on route/switch and the EU team is largely focused on automation. There is a third Ops team that handles most of the day-to-day operation of the network, but occasionally Ops work comes to our team and the US team largely handles this.
There have been attempts at cross-pollenating skills and focus, but it's difficult to teach someone automation when you only have a 2.5 hour window, and conversely it's difficult to involve people in route/system planning when most of the meetings take place at 8-9pm for the EU folks. We are fairly siloed, which makes the weekly 1.5 hour team meeting torture for the EU folks who have to sit and listen to the US folks talk among themselves about stuff they're working on.
There is also an issue with on-call work. The US team is disgruntled that they have to do all the on-call work. The EU team is only "on-call" during their normal working hours. This is because such unpaid after hours on-call work is simply expected in the US location, but is illegal in the EU location. Instead of offering double pay and/or PTO in exchange for on-call work in the EU, the company simply offered time and a half (and only for when actually responding to a call, not while chained to your phone/laptop in case something happens), which the EU employees are under no legal obligation to accept. Additionally, the company has not bothered to setup any infrastructure to record this time, let alone add extra pay to pay-checks. The network team manager is not in a position to change this as it's abstracted away to other departments (in the US location). I should also mention that the US engineers get paid substantially more than the EU team members, so there is a tradeoff.
Upper management has considered installing more middle management as the solution and giving the EU team another manager to report to. This new manager would be a general manager for multiple different EU infra teams and would not be providing any direction to the EU network team. (Honestly, I don't see what the point would be. The EU team would effectively still be reporting to a remote manager and coordinating with a remote team. The new middle manager would just be a needless extra hop)
I really don't know what a solution to these issues could be. It feels like there really needs to be two separate teams, one focused on RS and the other focused on automation, each driving their own initiatives. The time difference makes working together really difficult. If the EU team wants to be involved with what the US team is doing, they usually have to join remotely in the middle of the night because the US team isn't going to get up at 4am to join remotely...
Are any of you on networking teams with a similar situation? How did you solve it, or is it a continuous issue?
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