I don't know why you're being downvoted. They most certainly have had historically poor build quality. My Pixel 2 began boot looping after a couple of years of use and apparently that was motherboard quality issue that had been around since the Nexus line. I got a replacement and it happened again after another few months. Google "Pixel 2 bootloop" and you'll find thousands of threads from people with this issue.

That was around four years ago. I switched to an iPhone 11 and have had a fraction of the problems that I had with Android phones.

Because of the insistence on anecdotes rather than actual industry reports to back up the claim. Even your claim is your personal anecdote. But when you dive into actual industry repair reports, Pixels do not (at least in the ones I've looked at) stand up in terms of being "historically poor quality". For every anecdote of someone having an issue, there are a large majority that just use their phone day in and day out without a problem. And of course, there's also that person that has to point out that their Pixel is working just fine in response to the person with an issue.

I'm not trying to dismiss the issues Google has had. Just to put it in context that they get a lot of press about the issues they do have, and so there becomes an impression that it's historically bad when the actual numbers do not seem to show that to be the case. (Also, if anyone provides links to 2021 or newer reports, I'd be happy to revise my opinion here based on new data, if it shows that I'm no longer correct, as it's been a bit since the last report I saw.)

Can you link said industry repair report? I've not heard of such a thing.

I know you want to write my experience off as "bad luck" but I had several high-end Android phones with serious hardware and/or software issues before I made the switch.

I really wanted to like Android but I also want a phone that works. :/

I am not writing off your experience. I am saying, that while your experience is valid for you, it cannot be extrapolated industry wide.

For the report, I don't have a link handy. I looked into this in the past and was able to find a few different reports of that nature. I haven't looked for one in the last year or two, so like I said in another comment, if things have changed and what I read is out of date now, I'd be happy to have an update as well.

Pixels may have what seems to be an unusually high rate of problems over time if you judge things by anecdotes on Reddit. There are many more folks just puttering away on their Pixel oblivious that there are any issues at all (or even posting their own anecdotes in response to the anecdotes about problems telling folks that their Pixel is fine). But they don't generally show up leading the pack in industry reports from the folks repairing phones, at least the ones I've looked at.

Every manufacturer has some level of issues, Google sure seems to be about average. I will say that their insistence on automated (read: poor) support can sometimes exasperate problems (which then leads to more anecdotes being posted).