Removed posts appear as [removed] only if they have children (and, I believe, only mods can remove posts that have children). A post with no children that is removed by its author or a mod simply vanishes.
The tag HN uses is not [removed] but [deleted] and yes, if the post has no children, we don't bother displaying that. It's just there as a placeholder in comment trees. More importantly, though: mods never delete posts unless the author asks us to. The most we would do is kill a post, which shows as [dead] and is visible to anyone with showdead turned on in their profile.
There have been a handful of exceptions to that in 10 years, a couple accidental deletions and a couple that the legal department told us we had to do, but it is as solid a rule as we have on HN.
Absolutely not, and I appreciate what you do. It's very uncommon to see someone with the necessary set of skills to effectively maintain a community and put up with people like me. That also includes calmly explaining over and over again the decisions that have to be taken to moderate this site without falling for the "I'm doing this because this is the way it is/because I want to" argument.