Timezones: survival tips for engineers

Time zones present complex challenges for global businesses, primarily impacting billing, subscriptions, and customer trust when discrepancies arise due to differing local times. The text highlights the intricacies of managing time zones in product development, emphasizing the need for careful handling to prevent issues such as double billing or unanticipated expiries. Lago's approach involves storing dates in UTC format to maintain consistency and only converting them for display purposes, while also using Postgres's capabilities to manage time zone complexities effectively. This strategy helps avoid errors in time-sensitive operations like invoicing and subscriptions, ensuring clarity for both businesses and customers across different regions. The text also humorously notes the peculiarities of time zones, such as unique offsets and naming conventions, underscoring the importance of a robust system to handle these variations.