Remote Work Productivity Tradeoffs
WFH and the impact to junior and senior engineers
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Today I reviewed and want to share with you the findings of the working paper entitled “The Power of Proximity to Coworkers: Training for Tomorrow or Productivity Today?” This paper was written by Natalia Emanuel, Emma Harrington and Amanda Pallais and is supported by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
The paper explores the effects of proximity to coworkers by studying software engineers at a fortune 500 company, whose main campus has two buildings several blocks apart. This distance between the buildings closely simulates a work from home (WFH) environment. In early 2020, the buildings were then closed for COVID-19 and the research continued.
The summary of the finding is:
Remote work leads to a tradeoff - It increases output today, particularly from more senior workers. But remote work decreases training of more junior workers, which has future costs. Work arrangements seem to respond to this tradeoff with junior workers and potential mentors less likely to work remotely.
Seems logical and is likely something you’ve experienced right? The devil is in the details though, below I’ve extracted 6 impactful findings.
6 findings in the study
Sitting together reduces senior engineers' programming output by 39%, due to mentoring of junior engineers. When not in proximity the gap closed.
Engineers working in the same proximity as their teammates received 22% more online comments on their code than engineers with distant teammates. However after COVID-19 this advantage disappeared.
Sitting near coworkers increases online feedback on their code; engineers ask more followup questions online when sitting together, and so proximity can increase in-person AND digital communication.
Female engineers who were in the same proximity as all their teammates received 40% more feedback than female engineers with distant teammates. However with COVID-19 office closures, there was a differential decline of 21%. Largely driven by follow-up questions and clarifications, suggesting that women feel more comfortable asking for additional feedback in-person.
Proximity impacts career outcomes. Junior workers in proximity with their team are 5% less likely to receive a pay raise, consistent with their lower output. However, once the offices closed, and the mentorship equalizes, the engineers benefit from the mentorship that they have received and are 7% more likely to receive a pay raise.
Adding a new hire, not in proximity, reduces feedback among proximate teammates (who predate the new hire), while adding a new hire in the same building has no such impact. Teams’ attempts to accommodate distant teammates by, for example, moving in-person meetings online, have substantial negative externalities.
How to reduce the productivity impact
Based on the working paper, I recommend the following to engineers to remove friction and increase productivity when working within a remote team:
When growing your team, you can avoid short term productivity loss by hiring senior engineers OR hire junior engineers when you can afford the short term productivity loss.
If you hire a junior person, work quickly to train and mentor them, this expedites their learning and increases chance to get a pay raise.
Formally train your new hire on their missing skills immediately, letting it naturally happen on the job will take far longer at the expense of your senior engineers.
If you’re a junior engineer WFH, don’t be afraid to ask follow up questions.
If you’re the single remote worker on the team, work hard to remove friction such as time zone differences, start and stop times, your status/whereabouts and response time latency.
Make sure to be giving feedback (Slack, code reviews, etc.) to co-workers when WFH, make no assumption that it’s not needed.
Coordinate the days your teams spends in the office to increase mentorship opportunities.
Create a permanent online team room, with video on, where team members can work in the presence of others, ask questions and learn by overhearing.
In Conclusion
The working paper explored how software engineers work when in proximity of each other in the context of one building, two buildings and WFH. As teams continue to adapt to evolving work arrangements, when it comes to productivity, it’s important to remember that there must be a balance between immediate productivity gains and the long-term development of human capital in a remote work environment.
I found that this study confirms many of the things that we know when teammates are not working in proximity, but have a hard time articulating. Prior to reading this study I assumed that a two building teams’ work behaviors would be congruent with WFH. Given the difference of variables though, it’s just not that simple.
In reflection of engineers interacting less when WFH, I’m left wondering how much the societal changes that came with COVID-19 have caused some of the behaviors described in this paper -- knowing that COVID caused an accelerated digital transformation, flexible work arrangements, a change to our values and priorities, and a focus on mental health.
What are your thoughts and experiences?