7 April 20266 min read
Overlap is the one claim in outsourcing you can check yourself in two minutes, which is why it is worth checking rather than accepting. Here it is worked out for the four European markets that ask about it most, along with the thing that matters more than the raw number: which hours you get.
The gap does not drift, and that is unusual
Lebanon observes Eastern European Time, UTC+2, and moves to Eastern European Summer Time, UTC+3, on the same weekends the European Union changes its clocks. The consequence is that the offset between Beirut and any European capital is constant across the year.
That is not true of most outsourcing destinations. India, the Philippines and much of South-East Asia do not observe daylight saving, so the gap with Europe changes by an hour twice a year, and every recurring meeting has to be re-checked when it does. It is a small thing that produces a steady trickle of missed calls, and its absence is worth noting.
Germany, France, the Netherlands: one hour
All three run on Central European Time, so Beirut is one hour ahead of Berlin, Paris and Amsterdam year-round. A Beirut working day of nine to five is eight to four in Central Europe.
Against a nine to five in Berlin, Paris or Amsterdam, the shared window runs from nine to four, which is about seven hours. In practice you get slightly more, because the hour from eight to nine Central European time is a Beirut nine to ten, which is when review comments and questions from the morning are already landing.
Seven hours is enough that the offset does not have to be managed. Stand-ups, planning, reviews, pairing and demos all fit inside it without anyone scheduling around a constraint. The one adjustment is at the end: a decision made at half past four in Amsterdam reaches a team that has finished, so it is tomorrow's decision.
The UK: two hours
The United Kingdom runs on GMT and BST, so Beirut is two hours ahead of London year-round. A Beirut nine to five is a London seven to three.
The shared window against a London nine to five runs from nine to three, about six hours. That is still most of the working day, but the shape is different from the CET case in a way worth planning around: the overlap is front-loaded. Your morning is dense and your afternoon after three is quiet.
For a London team that runs its planning in the morning this is close to ideal. For one that habitually leaves decisions to a four o'clock catch-up, it is the wrong shape, and the fix is to move the catch-up rather than to complain about the geography.
What to put in the overlap
Overlap hours are a budget, and most teams spend them badly by filling them with the things that could have been asynchronous and pushing the things that need a person into the edges.
- In the shared hours: decisions, unblocking, pairing on anything unfamiliar, design and code review discussion, demos, and anything where the point is that two people react to each other
- Outside them: written status, documentation, the queue of work already agreed, and anything a person can do alone with a clear definition of done
- Never in the last hour of the shorter side's day: a question whose answer determines what someone does next
A useful discipline for a UK team specifically: treat three in the afternoon as the deadline for anything that unblocks someone else, in the same way you would treat a post deadline. It is arbitrary, it is easy to remember, and it removes most of the friction the two-hour gap can produce.
Belgium, Switzerland and the Nordics, briefly
Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Poland all run on Central European Time, so the Berlin arithmetic applies unchanged: one hour, about seven shared. Ireland and Portugal share the UK's clock, so the London arithmetic applies: two hours, about six shared.
Two local habits shift the picture slightly. Nordic working days tend to start and finish early, which pushes the overlap even further into the productive part of the day. Spanish and Italian days often run later, which means the shared window covers the afternoon collaboration period comfortably but the Beirut side has finished before a late Spanish afternoon meeting begins.
The number is not the point
Six or seven hours of overlap is enough that a question costs minutes rather than a day, and that is the entire practical claim. Beyond a certain point more overlap does not buy anything: a team in the same time zone with a badly structured working agreement will feel slower than a team an hour ahead with a good one. Check the arithmetic once, satisfy yourself it is not a constraint, then spend your attention on the things that actually vary between providers.