If people are not happy, that’s the most important thing. I’d fix that first and foremost.

• It doesn’t sound abnormal
• You’re not crazy, there is always room to improve dev experience
• Probably they worked at a big company with tooling for this kind of thing. Startups can’t afford the same design patterns as big companies.
• YMMV, but in my experience Go can exacerbate it. Every language has tradeoffs, and Go leans toward less DRY code. This architectural pattern doesn’t seem very Go-friendly.
• Frameworks are like safety rails around design patterns. If you’re not an expert, they can help you build a passable system design. But in the long term it’s better to learn design fundamentals and use frameworks only as needed.

Depending on your experience level, reading through refactoring.guru may help your situation. Lmk if so, and what you end up doing.