Also, infotainment is not a make-or-break feature of the car. It might nudge people a little, but it’s not the thing, so it’s not as high a priority.
I will say for my former employer that I could get a better salary at almost any software company than there. The work was interesting though.
A lot of automakers leave too much to their suppliers, and take too much on faith. The testing and validation is often happy-path only, show that it is capable of functioning properly, not that's incapable of functioning improperly. Pathetic but thrifty, as long as there are no standards for these things.
Mazda's gaffe here is that the boot-loop prevents the rear-view camera from working, which is a NHTSA requirement. So their 'courtesy replacement' is an attempt to avoid the shame of a true recall, as I understand it.
SWEs working at these companies are probably hamstrung in what they can do.
From cheap economobiles to six figure luxury cars, I've yet to see an infotainment system that works better than CarPlay.
The last bastion for factory infotainment systems is that CarPlay/Android Auto doesn't integrate with factory HUD or instrument panel displays (whether the instrument panel is a big LCD itself, or a small one nestled between the gauges). But I hear even this is changing in some recent models. Once that revolution is finished, then I don't see why I'd ever use the factory infotainment software ever again instead of just CarPlay.
Why is this? You'd think these massive corporations could afford the best SWE's in the world. And yet, the average infotainment system in a new car today is literally worse than an iPad from 2010.