One of the first things I was surprised by working in technology in Japan was the prevalence of “#times channels”. Channels named after individuals in which they (and others) will post more-or-less whatever they like.

Reader, I have come to really love them, and I think you might too.

OK I'll bite, what is a #times channel?

Times channels are personal channels (on Slack, but sometimes in Discord or other systems), and they are somewhere between a personal log, water-cooler chat and a back channel. Nobody is obliged to read them and nothing official happens in them, yet they weave together to form a useful social fabric.

The first times channel was probably #times_suin, and it was created as a complement to daily reporting: The cadence of daily reports (日報) meant that hours spent on a problem would not be visible to the colleagues and experts who might be able to help, and so #times_suin was created as an experimental "minute report" (分報) to allow for in-the-minute interventions.

The first problem shared into a times channel was resolved in just 8 minutes. By comparison, in the year before, the company's help channel had seen a total of 11 posts.

They didn't stay a tool for reporting: People started using their times channels for questions, chatter and lunch (replacing DMs, bringing conversations to the open), and what emerged was more like a "Company Twitter".

And, it worked, times culture spread quickly, really coming into its own with the surge in remote-working in early 2020. And for remote-working I think they are a superpower.

Ten years after the original post and the practice has spread far beyond engineering: Many companies now automatically issue new starters with times channels and the practice is still widely discussed. It's even practised outside of the workplace in small community spaces.

This is an example of what an average afternoon in #times_alex might look like.

Communication: Times changes what gets said

• Your messages aren't addressed to anyone: Messages in nearly every other channel expect an answer, but a times post is a bit like a murmur. “Huh, my builds are running slow” isn't a question, but someone might reply, and even if not, the observation becomes shared anecdata for someone working on builds or for the next person blocked by slow builds. At the far end is the morning おはよう which expects nothing at all, phatic expression: talk whose only job is to keep the line open.
• But anyone can address you: People might reply to your messages or contribute to your channel, with the explicit intention of addressing you. They effectively replace direct messages, which, you know, are closed, so in a times channel anyone can join in. In a case study with Slack, one company found that teams using these channels sent less than half the number of DMs versus teams who didn't (16% vs 37%).
• And anyone can overhear it: The combination of the two replace something offices give us: One half of a phone-call, someone explaining something or some casual chatter. Heath & Luff watched London Underground Control Rooms and found that operators coordinated by half-listening to talk that wasn't for them. Remote-working takes the room away and the widely accepted substitutes (#random, standups, socials, etc.) just put addressed speech back. A times channel, meanwhile, puts overhearing back instead.

These factors make it relatively safe, transparent & open: What you get is a channel where the cost of saying something is near-zero, and generally things go unsaid only because the cost was a bit too high. So more things will get said!

Community: Times changes who you end up knowing

• Silos shrink and you find out what other teams are doing: Allen found that engineers sitting more than 50m apart in the office don't talk much, and in 2020 Microsoft found that their approach to remote-work had formed silos with fewer bridges. Silos are expensive: Herbsleb & Mockus found that cross-silo work took 2.5x longer, because it pulled in far more people. Times channels are a relatively cheap bridge, and by being open and inclusive they create the opportunity for new connections between teams.
• You also learn more about other people: Nobody reads your channel because they have to and discovery is both encouraged and organic, a shared post here or there prompts people to join. But because of the breadth of topics that might appear in someone's channel, you learn about their hobbies and interests, as well as about shared issues at the company. These weak ties lead to opportunities at work and sometimes to new friendships!
• And new people get a sense of what is normal: The fastest way to learn what's OK to say and who knows what is to read these channels and to post in your own. VISASQ asks new starters to post a lot in their first month, and stefafafan joining a new company in 2024 found everyone's channels on day one and subscribed to all of them.

I work in a cross-functional team, meaning that I communicate across many different areas, and connections that I discovered, formed and maintain through times channels have made this far easier. By sharing ideas about work earlier I gain useful perspectives for the normal channels of work.

At this point I have lost count of how many coffees and lunches with people in distant corners of the company started with conversations in times channels.

Culture: Times changes what is normal

• Everyone gets a voice: In company norms, people only speak up when they have a reason to (or in private), and, especially in the companies that issue them at day-one, times channels reverse this. Everyone, regardless of rank or remit, has their space and no reason is required to share in it.
• They make back-channels public: Every organisation has an informal layer where ideas are floated before graduating to official forums, but usually this is a closed space like DMs, private team channels or sometimes cafes/pubs. Times channels are an alternative space where the same thing can (and does) happen. As mentioned earlier, this is especially useful when working cross-functionally.
• And they normalize asking questions and thinking out loud: Japanese companies teach new graduates 報連相 (report, inform, consult: a homophone of spinach), and similar ideas exist in other working cultures. But what about before there's something to share? Times channels enable thinking out loud, asking silly questions or soliciting very early feedback. There is the expectation that what goes into a times channel isn't held against you during evaluations: CloudNative made this explicit, and this is worthwhile doing if introducing times channels into your own organisation.

Times channels started as an engineering practice, but at the companies that adopted them they're now used by sales, support and back office too. They've spread across functions, across companies, into hobby communities, and now to me. Culture is what gets practised, not only what gets stated, and unlike a policy, this practice has travelled.

Aside: Making work visible

Times channels first started making sense to me when I noticed a loose parallel between them and weeknotes.

I publish weeknotes on this blog and religiously follow the weeknotes of several friends, and many of us picked this up at my previous company where several teams used weeknotes to share their progress, goings-on and random team events.

When times "clicked" for me, it was after I had started sharing progress, goings-on and random (team or personal) events. Same same, but different.

So what is the difference?

The intention behind both is similar: Make things visible and narrate them. The difference is who is speaking and when.

Weeknotes at work are usually team-first narrated and curated by a single person, for a group, on a schedule. This has also let it work as a format for individuals.

Times are usually individuals-first, one person narrating and broadcasting, for nobody in particular, whenever. However similar to the symmetry in weeknotes, I wonder if a team-first version can work and scale?

The difference has allowed them to spread out and be applied differently, but I think there is merit to using both techniques together to capture both ends of the process of collaboration.

How to start a times channel

Times channels originally spread by network effect through copying, and this is the overall shape for how I would introduce them today:

1. Create #times_yourname as a public channel: The #times_ prefix is important, because it allows these channels to be grouped, but really anything works e.g. #zp-, #journal_.
2. Set some rules: Put a contract in the channel description, something like: “Optional to read. Public not private. Nothing said here is used in evaluations. Nothing is decided here, and if it matters move it to a more appropriate forum/process”.
3. Post in it today! A morning greeting or some thoughts/notes on something you’re working on is plenty.
4. Keep going: Post for at least a week without waiting for anyone to notice. The practice itself is important.
5. Create more channels: Ask a handful of colleagues to create their own channels, and join each others, and repeat the practice. React, comment and reply when it feels appropriate or useful.
6. Make it universal: If it’s working for your smaller group, begin encouraging larger groups of people to start their own. Try to join as many as you can, but if the network effect is working then you probably won’t need to join them all.
7. Encourage new-starters to post: Help new starters make their own channels (or automate it), and encourage them to post as much as they can, and to ask questions/etc. to help them settle in.
8. Avoid adding structure: Past several dozen channels, it’s impractical to follow everything. That’s OK! Adding structure and rules starts to undo some of the benefits I’ve described here. This is a moving target, and for example the community has built aggregators/etc. that may help.
9. Have fun with it!

What breaks it?

• Times channels rely entirely on psychological safety, and not feeling like “work”, and so if there’s any doubt at all, make the rule about evaluations explicit. Write it down and codify it somewhere.
• To avoid power dynamics having an impact, it’s important that managers and senior leaders approach these channels as peers: Reply, comment and react as anyone else would, but never instruct/etc. Also, for the tape, please be mindful about bringing up something discussed in their times channel in a 1:1.
• “Anything goes” and “doesn’t count towards evaluations” are useful guard-rails, but of course, the standard rules of professionalism and the workplace still apply. If useful, you can codify this too.
• Activity is not a useful signal: Some channels will be busy and some will be quiet. One might be popular one day, and totally peaceful the next. This is normal and fine! Forcing activity is not remotely useful.
• Resist the temptation to use AI tooling to aggregate times channels into reports or similar. Actual reporting is better done by the person it is assigned to, and if they use their times channel to help inform it, that is their choice and not yours.
• Decisions can be informed by what happens in a times channel, but just like the back channels they augment, they should not be used to subvert due process. Early feedback on a proposal is not the same as a proposal going through a standard channel.

The #times is now

As I mentioned, at first times channels slightly bewildered me, but I have since become a total convert. They are a tool that I wish I'd had during the height of remote-work in 2020, and frankly even before it.

I have since started times channels in a few other places and they work there too, which is roughly the point.

If you're reading this somewhere with a channel named after you, post something in it! And if you aren't, and any of this post resonates with you, please give times channels a try: I believe that times channels can be a workplace superpower.