Pacific Time (PT)
San Francisco operates on Pacific Time (PT). San Francisco observes Daylight Saving Time, springing forward one hour in March and falling back in November. During DST, the abbreviation changes to reflect the shift.
Time Zone: Pacific Time (PT) — Standard Offset: UTC-8 (PST) — DST Offset: UTC-7 (PDT)
Country: United States
This city observes Daylight Saving Time, so the UTC offset changes twice per year. Always verify the current offset when scheduling across time zones.
San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area — home to Silicon Valley — operate on Pacific Time. This makes PT the de facto time zone of the global tech industry. Apple, Google, Meta, Salesforce, Stripe, and thousands of startups run on Pacific Time. Product launches, earnings calls, WWDC keynotes, and developer conferences are scheduled in PT. If you work in tech, you likely think in Pacific Time regardless of where you live.
The famous '9-to-5' barely applies in SF tech culture — flexible schedules are the norm, with many engineers working 10 AM to 7 PM or later. However, company-wide meetings and cross-team coordination still anchor to Pacific hours. The 3-hour gap with the East Coast means SF tech workers often start their day with a backlog of Slack messages and emails from NY-based colleagues who've been working for 3 hours already.
San Francisco observes DST from the second Sunday in March through the first Sunday in November. California voters passed Proposition 7 in 2018 to potentially adopt permanent DST, but it still requires Congressional approval. For now, clocks shift twice yearly. During PDT, San Francisco is UTC-7; during PST, it's UTC-8.
Pacific Time is the most challenging US time zone for international scheduling. When SF wakes up at 8 AM PT, London is at 4 PM (only 1-2 hours of overlap remaining), and Asia is already past midnight. SF-based companies with global teams typically use asynchronous communication heavily or require some team members to work shifted hours. The best SF-to-Europe window is 7-9 AM PT; for Asia, 4-6 PM PT catches the next morning.