04 Power-of-Proximity-to-Coworkers NBER-w31880
This NBER working paper examines how physical proximity among software engineers at a large online retailer shapes on‑the‑job training, feedback, coding output, and broader labor‑market outcomes. Using a difference‑in‑differences framework that exploits the 2020 office‑closure period and the 2022‑2023 return‑to‑office (RTO) mandates, the authors find that sitting near teammates raises the amount of coding feedback (an 18.3% decline when proximity is lost) and improves code quality, with the strongest gains for younger and less‑tenured engineers. The paper presents extensive robustness checks (Table A.9) confirming that proximity increases programs submitted, lines added, and files changed. Further RTO analyses (Table A.10) show that the benefits of co‑location diminish when teams become geographically dispersed, especially for older or more tenured engineers. Alternative coding‑quantity measures (Table A.11) corroborate these patterns across programs, added lines, and changed files. The authors also explore labor‑market dynamics: engineers who spent more pre‑closure time on co‑located teams are less likely to quit for better jobs (Table A.12), and attendance preferences reveal that young engineers and new hires strongly prefer to badge into the office when their whole team or manager is co‑located (Tables A.13‑A.15). Beyond the engineering cohort, the paper evaluates the quality of code‑review comments using crowdsourced judgments and a gradient‑boosted decision‑tree model (Section C, Tables A.16), achieving modest predictive accuracy for helpfulness, actionability, and reasoning. Finally, the authors extend the analysis to the macro labor market, showing that remote work contributes to rising unemployment among young non‑college graduates, though the effect is attenuated when controlling for generative‑AI exposure (Section D, Figure A.18, Table A.17). The study combines firm‑level code‑review data, badge‑attendance logs, and national survey data to argue that physical proximity is a key driver of skill acquisition, productivity, and retention in knowledge‑intensive occupations.
Topics
Proximity Effects on Engineer Coding Output and Robustness Checks
Physical proximity to teammates raises engineers' coding productivity: more programs submitted, more lines added, and more files changed per month. Robustness analyses (Table A.9) confirm these gains across multiple specifications, and alternative coding‑quantity measures (Table A.11) – including main‑code‑base programs – yield consistent results.