I solder on from the back with a jumper by tinning the wire and tacking it on - it doesn’t have to be perfect to quickly upload. Just be careful with handling the wires. I have a dev box I use that I leave some jumpers coming out of a hole I drilled, and for prod versions I do OTA updates so you only have to do it once.
We also plan to use in batches of 8-16, so yeah it’s a lot of work for the initial programming. What an unfortunate design choice for an otherwise great product.