Is it weird that I don't like his stairs? Also, I don't know many people that build wooden stairs with brackets. Usually, you get two pieces of suitably long and wide lumber, clamp them together, and cut them together. So it looks something like this (https://www.lowes.com/pd/Severe-Weather-4-Step-Pressure-Trea...). This solves most of his problems.

Basically, I get his point, but I think he chose a really poor example to illustrate it. All I'm hearing from this guy is: "I've never actually had to build stairs."