Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
同事邻近性的力量
The Power of Proximity to Coworkers
摘要
How does proximity to coworkers affect training and productivity? We study software engineers at a Fortune 500 firm from 2019 to 2024, leveraging two shocks to proximity: (i) the office closures in 2020 and (ii) the subsequent return-to-office mandates in 2022 and 2023. In both cases, co-located teams experienced bigger changes in proximity than distributed ones, facilitating difference-in-differences designs. We find that sitting near teammates increases coding feedback by 18.3% and improves code quality. Gains are concentrated among less-tenured and younger employees, who are building human capital. However, there is a tradeoff: experienced engineers write less code when sitting near teammates. In national US data, we find evidence that the rise of remote work has had scarring effects on young college graduates. In remotable jobs, young graduates’ unemployment rate increased relative to older graduates’ post-pandemic (2022−2024) compared to pre-pandemic (2017−2019), a pattern we do not observe in non-remotable jobs.
中文摘要
与同事的邻近性如何影响培训与生产力？我们以2019至2024年间某《财富》500强企业的软件工程师为研究对象，利用两次邻近性冲击：（i）2020年办公室关闭，以及（ii）随后2022至2023年重返办公室的强制要求。在这两种情形下，同地办公团队比分布式团队经历了更大的邻近性变化，这为双重差分设计提供了便利。研究发现，与队友相邻而坐可使编码反馈增加18.3%，并提升代码质量。这些收益主要集中于资历较浅和较年轻的员工，他们正处于人力资本积累阶段。然而，存在一个权衡：经验丰富的工程师在邻近队友就座时编写的代码量会减少。在全美数据中，我们发现远程办公的兴起对年轻大学毕业生产生了持续影响。在可远程办公的岗位中，年轻毕业生在疫情后时期（2022-2024年）的失业率相较于疫情前（2017-2019年）高于年长毕业生，而这一模式在不可远程办公的岗位中并未出现。