I think we have to consider the background here... Sidefx's traditional market, and priority, is high end VFX - as you well know. The production pipeline for that is totally different to the daily work of a solo Indie artist. Modellers model, lighters light, animators animate etc. Yes, that means there are frustrations for the Indie artist with our do-it-all requirements. I think Sidefx do realise that they need to cater for these other workflows - Christin Bargiel noted the widening of the Sidefx customer base at the London presentation - so hopefully they will increasingly take that into account. But, I think if you use Houdini, you need to accept that as an Indie you're on the periphery of the current customer base and that will mean some frustrations.
My USD know-how is close to zero, but I think I read about some issues with USD and camera switching, so that may explain the current lack of that feature.
I do think SideFX could do with focussing some more on quality of life / ease of use aspects - but, like many other developers I suspect they have a considerably longer list of things to do than resources to deliver them.