My own efforts at hand-soldering surface mount components are quite entertaining! That's the reason I'm using through-hole components on this design, at least for the moment. My last RC project, a dynamic timing module for use with ESCs that don't have the feature, was surface-mount, and it was a real challenge for my shaky hands.

You are probably looking at a prototype; these are usually hand-soldered. The only thing that would be hand-soldered on production units would be the power wires.