"As for PTO I appreciate my boss's explanation: "I just don't want any sniping over sick days. If you don't feel like you can come in and work, it should cost something. That way nobody will complain when someone calls in sick."
Time to quit. Your boss thinks your team is full of petty assholes who will complain when somebody takes a few days off for being sick.
It's not too bad if you get a minimum 6 weeks combined PTO. Still you will find people are more likely to come in when sick and drag the rest of the team down with them.
"All of those situations seem innocuous when you're all working together, but if you're in separate offices or working remotely people will end up wasting time trying to figure these things out by themselves before reaching out for help."
Firstly "wasting time trying to figure these things out by themselves" is a key part in overall learning and development. You want engineers to "waste time" like this.
Secondly, having worked in an open plan office for the last 5 years I've found I can help with maybe 2-3% of the conversations people in the office are having. I'm distracted by all of them and it results in chronic low productivity.
"and with open offices you have to have a space employees can go to get serious work done without distractions"
90% of your work should be "serious work". Open office employees are just used to chronic low productivity. When working from home I get 10x the amount of work done that I would at work. Quite honestly I could work at home Monday and then do pretty much no work at all Tuesday-Friday and my output would still be above average for the office.
Time to quit. Your boss thinks your team is full of petty assholes who will complain when somebody takes a few days off for being sick.
It's not too bad if you get a minimum 6 weeks combined PTO. Still you will find people are more likely to come in when sick and drag the rest of the team down with them.
"All of those situations seem innocuous when you're all working together, but if you're in separate offices or working remotely people will end up wasting time trying to figure these things out by themselves before reaching out for help."
Firstly "wasting time trying to figure these things out by themselves" is a key part in overall learning and development. You want engineers to "waste time" like this.
Secondly, having worked in an open plan office for the last 5 years I've found I can help with maybe 2-3% of the conversations people in the office are having. I'm distracted by all of them and it results in chronic low productivity.
"and with open offices you have to have a space employees can go to get serious work done without distractions"
90% of your work should be "serious work". Open office employees are just used to chronic low productivity. When working from home I get 10x the amount of work done that I would at work. Quite honestly I could work at home Monday and then do pretty much no work at all Tuesday-Friday and my output would still be above average for the office.