I'm not in embedded, but my reasoning is simple. I'm keeping system as simple as possible and I put veto to things that I find unnecessarily complex. I don't think that smart person will want to make a system more complex. The genius makes stuff as simple as possible (but not simpler). I'm not genius but I strive to follow this direction. And if someone follow the complexity direction, I consider him not so smart yet.
As to whitespaces. It does not matter and not worth arguing. Either way works. You need to accept that some people might write code differently from you and that's OK. It does not make that code inherently complex. Of course there should be code style and in my opinion the more strict code style - the better, but it still will not cover everything, there's still some freedom and peers should respect that freedom and not push their own view of beatiful.
As to whitespaces. It does not matter and not worth arguing. Either way works. You need to accept that some people might write code differently from you and that's OK. It does not make that code inherently complex. Of course there should be code style and in my opinion the more strict code style - the better, but it still will not cover everything, there's still some freedom and peers should respect that freedom and not push their own view of beatiful.