I'm a developer so not as much an outlier. My usual workspace is usually laid like this:

1. Emacs. Coding and other stuff

2. Browser. Either the web application I'm working on and other searches

3. Terminal. For long standing actions and other system stuff.

4 . Documentation. Mostly another browser windows.

5. Utilities. Mostly GUI related to the current project I'm working on (Database, API Tests,...

I'm working inside a VM (macOS hosts) so I use the host software for other things. But if it bare-metal, I'd add a workspace for media, and another for communication.

As you may guess, it's almost one maximized application for each workspace. This way I can quickly switch to it with the keybindings. The only time I have a proper tiling structure is when I need the information from both windows at once (Taking notes and reading a document,...). Tiling is mostly about not thinking about where the windows will be, not to have everything there at once.

macOS has Spaces, but the ergonomics are bad. Especially the animations if you use them a lot.

I use an ultra wide screen and do both coding and video operations so I'm always having side by side layouts mixed in with tabbed windows.

One typical case is navigating a file manager to grab files that I need to drag and drop on a web UI, or folder/URI slug names I need to keep copying back and forth to use on a workflow.

Another is watching stdout/stderr of a running script and a log tail at the same time.

Sometimes I have tabs of web, file manager and some other app on one side and a terminal on the other as terminal commands are the glue of a workflow.

Or I'll be screening a video on the left and doing edits on the right. Or keeping notes open on the side during a conference call.

Sometimes I'll only have one window in a virtual desktop and ultrawide is too much, so I just have an idle terminal window as padding.

Not having to hunt around for windows then hunting for their edges helps when I'm constantly opening, closing and sizing terminals, file managers and so on and so forth. It simply is faster with tiles.

This will sound silly, but doesn't that hurt your neck? You mention you use a ultra wide screen.

I have one of the "drive in theater" iMacs, and I prefer the windows in the center. It's big enough that if things were on either side, I'd have to crane my neck to focus on either side. I'd hate to have to do that all the time.

I guess if I were to do anything "tile" wize it would be two smaller columns, one on the left, and one on the right, and then the big center as the main focus.

I don’t work in programming, but in arts and academia. I usually have 1 “main” window in working in and at least 1-2 more I am continually referring to, so I like to be able to quickly switch between a single fullscreen window and a 2 column view. Typical workspaces for me are Zotero + Firefox + Word (for writing and research) and Photoshop/InDesign + Finder + Firefox (for design). When I do code, I like being able to have at least 1 terminal window side-by-side with a coding LLM. I usually also have a workspace with Spotify + MacPass + Telegram open that I refer to as needed.

Hyprland here. My primary screen (and workspaces on it) is nearly always a single app, while the secondary has tiles - much like your ops friend. I would actually love a window manager that embeds this assumption.

Tons of terminals for me. Tiling window managers are great for that. The alternative, I guess, would be one big terminal running tmux, but with my tiling window manager it works with GUIs when necessary.