Up to this point we've been taught to maintain proper topology for our meshes, and keep 'em all quads. So I was really surprised with the amounts of ngons you used, the amounts of clipping that you did just to get a model. Is this a practice seen often in the industry?
In what industry? we have films, games, vfx and etc.
Ofc if you use game engine you must triangle and use low poly meshes.
Topology help make good object, but not all objects need good topology. You gonna need topology on some hardsurface like motocycle, robots, cars and animals with humans. But if object static and you only render it(no one see wire) you can use whatever type of modeling. It must at end just look good.
If you make cool render, dont think about number of vertecs. (OFC depend on your pc)