Denti
The straight type rating course is meant for pilots who have acquired basic flying skills in another jet aircraft. They are taught the procedures and peculiarities of airbus. But you do find an experienced 737 copilot has no idea how to fly an ILS without FD'S. Then the course has no space to learn that afresh. He is worse off than 200 hrs. guy who gets extra training JOC.
True enough, however, cadets usually have around 150 to 200 hours in the simulator already by the point they start their typerating. If they do a quality MPL training that is, like most bigger european operators with inhouse training do. Oh, and they of course might have flown light jets during their initial 80 hours of flight training as well. They make for nice advanced trainers.
Anyway, the point about the FDs being off while the AP is on depends very much on type. In the airbus it is a huge thing not to do. In other types it doesn't matter at all, like the 737 for example. Quite a few of my colleagues used that mode as their preferred way to operate and there was no downside to that. Now that they are on the bus they did adjust and just do normal FD off take offs like anybody else.