I actually like it this way. I moved from i3 to AwesomeWM years ago, which basically has a bunch of pre-defined layouts. It's incredibly convenient, imo. Not sure what's complicated about it. I just hope it has hotkeys that let you switch layouts and it can assign the windows automatically (or remembers previous assignments). Otherwise it would be tedious.

edit: Just checked. It has a hotkey to switch between saved layouts. And you can set it so a newly opened program goes to its last known zone. That's pretty cool. I'll have to try it.