Sacrifice Score
The pain index that makes timezone burden visible — and fair.
The idea
Someone on a global team always takes the bad slot — the 6am standup, the 11pm review. Usually it's the same person, and usually nobody notices. The Sacrifice Score quantifies that burden so teams can see it, talk about it, and rotate it.
Pain weights by local hour
Every slot gets a base weight (1–10 points) from each participant's local time:
- Golden (10am–4pm): 1 point — minimal impact
- Good (9–10am, 4–5pm): 1.5 points
- Acceptable (8–9am, 5–6pm): 2 points
- Early morning (7–8am) / evening (6–8pm): 3 points
- Late evening (8–9pm): 4 points
- Night (9–11pm): 5–6 points
- Graveyard (11pm–7am): 10 points — career-damage territory
The jump to 10 for graveyard hours is deliberate: a 3am call is qualitatively different from a slightly early 8am one. The weights follow circadian research and the real work-life cost of meeting outside human hours.
Multipliers
- Duration: points scale per 30-minute block — a 90-minute 7am call hurts three times as much as a 30-minute one
- Recurring: ×1.5 — weekly pain compounds
- Organizer: ×0.8 — you chose the time, so it costs you a little less
The leaderboard
On paid plans, the team leaderboard totals everyone's sacrifice over the last 30 days. When one member carries several times the team average, ClockAlign raises a fairness alert and proposes a rotation for the recurring meetings causing it.