It's not like people were not still doing work/coding during that time, it's just that they're already working at max capacity (40h/week) and can't deliver more output, unless the entire management process gets streamlined but that's nearly impossible in large established German companies where a lot of projects are done by slow processes spanning decades of Iterative development, similar to the aero industry, and are now being attacked by young auto companies following agile practices.

Ideally they should spin off new SW projects into separate start-up entities built from the ground up on modern practices instead of rolling ancient projects and convincing old workers to update their skills to enter new projects.. oh wait they already tried that and failed miserably[1]

The problem with automotive development in Germany(and everywhere else I think) is that it's not entirely engineering driven by those in the trenches who see and know where the speedbumps are but by clueless MBAs with PhDs from fancy universities who have no idea what's going on and just brute force the "conjoined triangles of success" everywhere hoping it works.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volksw...