And to add to that…we are the cause of many of those messes. If we’d take the time to focus on technique a lot would fix itself. I’ve found most trainers will ramp beautifully…if you are on the power ALL the way around the pedal stroke. One quadrant that’s less than the others will screw everything up.
However, in this case, the issue is standing vs sitting and I’d agree…just shift and make it work if you’re on a bike that can do that…us smartbike people don’t have that option. 
I’ve seen comments on the Stages SB20 discussion that they may look to make “shifting in ERG” a thing. It will be different, since it’s not actually changing gearing, and only adjusting the resistance unit.
But I could see some implementation that serves a similar feel to what we get when shifting on a real bike. Will be a challenge, but one I hope they address.
I completely agree that we can make things messy with sloppy technique and tighter with a smooth pedal stroke. If you look at my workouts from July, when I was on a dumb fluid trainer with a power meter, my power plots were pretty smooth on steady states and ramps alike. When I first got the power meter though, it wasn’t all that good at all - without the power plot I didn’t know that my pedalstroke needed work. Knowledge is power!
As to the idea of doing this workout outside - if I can do a workout outside then I will! There’s nowhere near home where I could do this though, unfortunately (and I only had my lunch break so it was a bit tight as it was - I was the proper Trainer Road target audience today).
If I could find a decent 10 minute gradient near here I’d be sooo happy. I’d be even happier if it didn’t have 20 cars per minute thundering up and down it, but that’s even less likely!