Christopher Penkin

About Blog

Sometimes You're Building People, and the Product is Just the By-Product

I used to be the guy who would roll his eyes at anyone suggesting office work had benefits. Remote work was the answer. The only answer. If it wasn’t working for a company, that company simply wasn’t trying hard enough. Full stop.

Well, I was wrong. Or at least, I was seeing it in black and white when there’s a whole lot of grey in between.

About a month ago, I went back to the office at Digital Solution Foundry. Full time. Not hybrid, not a couple days a week - full time. And it’s completely challenged how I think about remote work.

What Changed?

Here’s the thing; I still think remote work is great. But I’ve realized it’s not great for everything. And that’s a tough pill to swallow when you’ve been so vocally pro-remote-only for years.

At DSF, we have this core value around lifting people up. We take on interns, junior developers, people who might only have a year or less of experience (or even none). We’re not just building software; we’re teaching people how to build software. We’re helping them learn the craft, grow their skills, become better developers.

And that’s where remote work showed its limitations for us.

The Goldmine of Organic Conversations

And that’s where remote work showed its limitations for us. In the last month, I’ve noticed something I completely missed when I was remote. There are these little conversations that happen organically in an office that you just don’t get over Slack or Microsoft Teams.

Research backs this up in a big way. A study from Harvard, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and the University of Iowa found that software engineers received 22% more feedback on their code when working in the same building as their teammates.¹ Another study estimated that between 25-70% of work time is spent in face-to-face interactions, and roughly 30% of those are casual conversations; the kind that happen around the proverbial water cooler.²

A junior developer is stuck on something. Instead of posting in a channel and waiting for a response, they turn to the person next to them. That person might be just as junior, and they work through it together; sometimes incorrectly, sometimes brilliantly. And I get to be there for that. I can jump in, not to take over, but to show them how a seasoned developer thinks about the problem. How to ask the right questions. How to get to the actual problem instead of plastering over a symptom. Oh and don’t forget the good old whiteboard and markers… unbeatable!

These aren’t scheduled mentoring sessions. They’re not formal pair programming exercises. They’re just moments. Quick five-minute conversations that happen because someone’s struggling and someone else is nearby. And those moments have been an absolute goldmine. Gallup research found that these informal workplace interactions can improve team performance by up to 50%.³

The Nuance I Missed

Look, I’m not saying remote work is bad. I’m saying it depends.

For well-established teams with experienced developers who know what questions to ask and how to dig into problems? Remote works perfectly. Everyone has enough experience to be autonomous. Everyone knows how to communicate effectively asynchronously. The system works.

But when you’re building people up, when you’re teaching, when you’re creating an environment where inexperienced developers can learn from each other and from more experienced folks? That’s harder to replicate remotely. Studies have shown that remote and hybrid environments often fail to have effective structures to integrate, onboard, and train junior staff - which might explain why employee engagement has been declining in remote settings.⁴

And here’s something that really stood out to me: companies with formal mentoring programs see a 50% increase in employee engagement and retention.⁵ But the research also shows that less experienced workers struggle more with remote mentorship - they’re often unsure about the appropriate mode of communication, hesitant to reach out, and miss out on the kind of spontaneous learning that happens when you’re physically near more senior colleagues.⁶

I used to think any company that couldn’t make remote work was just doing it wrong. And maybe some are. But I’ve realised that what you’re trying to achieve matters. Sometimes you’re building a product, and sometimes you’re building people and the by-product is the product.

What I Believe Now

Remote work is still the most flexible way to work. It offers freedom that’s hard to beat. But it’s not always the best way to work for what you’re trying to accomplish.

If you’re building with a team of senior developers working on a well-defined product? Remote might be perfect.

If you’re trying to create a learning environment where junior developers can grow through osmosis, through those little moments of connection and teaching? You might need people in the same physical space, at least some of the time.

The answer isn’t “remote is always better” or “office is always better.” The answer is “it depends on what you’re building and who you’re building it with.”

---

References