The lack of F keys continues to boggle my mind on these custom layouts. I need to be be able to mash F5 or F8 at a moments notice without any chording nonsense. Unless you are working from an ironing board, most desks have ample “vertical” space to extend towards the monitor with the extra keyboard row.
Perhaps they're using these keyboards on a Mac?
MacOS doesn't really use F keys. They're instead dedicated to some system-wide controls (media, volume, display brightness) by default, and you'd need to chord to use them as function keys. They're rarely assigned to anything anyway.