Oh believe me I completely agree. It was like that for nearly a decade in the maritime industry when people were glassing over foam and switching to epoxy. UV inhibitors or dark pigmenting to block it out. And of course that’s why there are metal sleeves and giant washers through the bolt holes in transoms. People have unrealistic expectations of some of these “mechanical engineers” as well. What is their actual real world engineering experience. Did they take night classes on line or was it a real tech school and show up to class? There are vast differences between “looks good on paper” and real world applications. I’m not saying engineers aren’t good. I’m saying I’ve seen first hand many times where real world technicians “fix” engineer errors.
Most Engineers are a joke so I agree a degree is not a prerequisite to a solid stick/platform design. That said, if you had a decent engineer with balanced experience in fabrication and structural design I think you could really refine some designs.
For this type of application I.e. slim to no requirements, you could design, test, break, repeat yourself into a solid design without ever breaking out a pen and paper. I suspect this is what most companies do anyway and rightfully so. Further analysis of failure modes, fatigue etc. is not cost prohibitive in most cases for these applications.
