EST vs PST time zone comparison

How EST and PST compare

Pacific Standard Time runs three hours behind Eastern Standard Time, the most common scheduling axis in the United States and the one most software teams hit every working day. Tech companies headquartered in San Francisco, Seattle, and Los Angeles coordinate with East Coast clients in New York, Boston, Toronto, and Atlanta across this gap constantly. The practical sweet spot for a transcontinental call is 1 PM Eastern, which lands at 10 AM Pacific. Afternoon for the East, mid-morning for the West, both well before West Coast lunch and well before the East Coast end-of-day attention drop. Push the meeting later than 5 PM Eastern and you have stranded everyone east of Denver in their commute window. Push it earlier than 9 AM Pacific and your West Coast attendees are not yet at their desks. The gap stays at three hours year-round because EST and PST both observe daylight saving on the same dates: second Sunday of March forward, first Sunday of November back. When the East shifts to EDT, the West shifts to PDT, and the three-hour offset is preserved. The only exception is Arizona, which stays on MST (UTC-7) year-round, so a Phoenix-based contact will drift relative to both coasts twice a year even though they nominally sit between the two.

Working-hour overlap

Solid overlap from 12 PM to 5 PM Eastern (9 AM to 2 PM Pacific), with 1 PM Eastern (10 AM Pacific) the obvious default.

When to schedule

Default to 1 PM Eastern (10 AM Pacific) for any cross-coast meeting. It works for 90% of cases. If you need a longer call (90+ minutes), pull it earlier to 12 PM Eastern (9 AM Pacific) so the West Coast does not lose its morning to a single block. For interview loops where the East is doing the asking, batch them in the East Coast morning (9-11 AM Eastern, 6-8 AM Pacific) and accept that you are asking the West to be early. For all-hands or town halls, 11 AM Pacific (2 PM Eastern) sits inside everyone's working day with minimum disruption. Never schedule recurring weekly meetings for 9 AM Eastern, which is 6 AM Pacific.

Notable context

The US stock markets (NYSE, NASDAQ) open at 9:30 AM Eastern, which is 6:30 AM Pacific. Every West Coast trading desk and fintech team starts before 6 AM Pacific to be at their desks before the bell. This means West Coast finance professionals are genuinely awake and reading email well before their tech-industry neighbors, and an 8 AM Pacific call to a finance contact is normal where the same call to an engineering manager would feel unfriendly. The flip side: West Coast television and film operate on a much later schedule, so a 5 PM Pacific call to an entertainment exec is still well inside their day.