I've worked at a company which could be described that way (in aerospace). I know by experience that they're terrible at this.
They're not a software company, so not only do they lack experience, they lack the company culture. As a PG essay once pointed out (in the context of American car design), if your manager lacks knowledge of a thing, then they also lack knowledge necessary to identify a competent expert to hire.
The company is world-class at systems integration. If you want a giant component built in Italy to mate with a giant component made in Japan, they can manage to deliver the specs, have them built and tested independently, shipped to their factory floor, and joined perfectly. And repeat the manufacturing process, every day, for years.
If you suggest that the database should use a transaction for saving a crucial piece of data, they're lost. They've got internal policies that work great for bolts and wires (standardize all the things!), but suck for software (every software system must use the same database system, which we selected 30 years ago, i.e., it's no longer maintained). Specs are written like hardware specs which will change only minimally (we need a larger bolt), but of course they change all the time in significant ways (need to add a new core feature to the software which will require a completely different schema). Release cycles are literally measured in months, and they have a culture of hard public deadlines, so most problems simply can't get fixed in time, even if they're identified.
It doesn't surprise me in the least that car companies are having problems with software.
They're not a software company, so not only do they lack experience, they lack the company culture. As a PG essay once pointed out (in the context of American car design), if your manager lacks knowledge of a thing, then they also lack knowledge necessary to identify a competent expert to hire.
The company is world-class at systems integration. If you want a giant component built in Italy to mate with a giant component made in Japan, they can manage to deliver the specs, have them built and tested independently, shipped to their factory floor, and joined perfectly. And repeat the manufacturing process, every day, for years.
If you suggest that the database should use a transaction for saving a crucial piece of data, they're lost. They've got internal policies that work great for bolts and wires (standardize all the things!), but suck for software (every software system must use the same database system, which we selected 30 years ago, i.e., it's no longer maintained). Specs are written like hardware specs which will change only minimally (we need a larger bolt), but of course they change all the time in significant ways (need to add a new core feature to the software which will require a completely different schema). Release cycles are literally measured in months, and they have a culture of hard public deadlines, so most problems simply can't get fixed in time, even if they're identified.
It doesn't surprise me in the least that car companies are having problems with software.