Product developers are the people who make a product. They are the people who actually make something that no one else makes. They can be software developers, hardware engineers, or production workers, whatever your skill set is.
They work on projects that have been chosen by other departments, or that have been requested from customers in order to meet their requirements. They may be responsible for building prototype products and testing them in-house before they go live – or they may be responsible for shipping them out to customers.
Because of their creative minds, product development is at the heart of any company’s success or failure. Product development is also a very intense and often stressful job with lots of responsibility on both sides (product management and engineering). The sheer amount of work can easily become too much for a single person to handle alone: you need a team – and they need you.
If you want to get into product development but aren’t quite sure what it involves, here’s an overview:
Description of a Product Developer
A product developer is a software engineer who specializes in writing computer programs. In the early days of computing, programmers were often hired by major computer manufacturers to create their own versions of existing products. A product developer might work in the marketing or sales department, software engineering analytics, and be usually referred to as a “technical writer” in those early days.
In recent years, more and more product developers are being hired by startups and small businesses who lack the resources or experience to hire a software engineer full-time. Product development jobs are now changing rapidly due to the rapid advancement of technology and application development.
Job Duties of a Product Developer
Product development is one of the most competitive areas in the software industry. Many companies are developing products to meet customer needs. This means that a product developer is one of the most important people in an organization. It’s also important to understand that product development is not just about coding, it’s about creating something great for people.
The first step for a product developer is to determine what your company does well and how you can best help customers. Once you have decided what you do well, you should be thinking about how it differs from other companies – and how you can add value in some way to help them out.
There are many different types of product developers, including but not limited to: front-end developers, UX designers, back-end developers/coders and more!
Education and Training Requirements for a Product Developer
Product developer jobs for software engineers vary by company. Some require a bachelor’s degree in a technology field. Other companies prefer to hire product developers with at least two years of experience in software development.
I don’t mean to sound snooty here, but I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt that this is an accurate representation of the requirements for a product developer job at an actual software development firm, and that it is reasonably representative and useful for aspiring product developers. I’d like to point out some things about this list (and their implications) which are worth mentioning:
- Non-technical experience is not required. A recent survey by Glassdoor found that up to 85% of US jobs have no requirement for prior technical experience or education.
- No software development background is required, so if you aren’t a programmer, you can be hired as a product developer without being considered as “a programmer” just because you are good at implementing new ideas or solving problems using technology.
- You must have experience working with other people, which means having worked on projects involving collaboration and teamwork — most likely in non-technical roles like project manager and team member (but these are not required skills). This could also mean dealing with other departments more than just engineering — someone who can manage multiple projects will be more valuable than someone who can code alone into oblivion. This gets back around to the topic of specialization; if you don’t know how to do certain tasks well enough to contribute your ideas effectively then you probably aren’t going to be able to contribute any well-rounded suggestions in general either (which does not mean that everyone cannot contribute ideas; it just means you probably won’t be able to do so effectively from your first day on the job).
- Most importantly: anyone can apply for these positions — they don’t necessarily have prerequisites or specific backgrounds that need to be met before they are hired as a product developer (although they might have some preferences). This is because actual job ads will never say specifically “no CS degrees needed” or anything along those lines: even if they did say it, it would still not imply that people would automatically get hired based on their degrees alone. A typical job ad might say something like “We are hiring experienced web developers with extensive experience building iOS apps and web apps from scratch; we do not require
Salary and Career Outlook for a Product Developer
Product development jobs have been around for a very long time and are a fairly stable employment field. What hasn’t always given them much buzz, however, is health care.
The subject of health care has received increased attention in recent years as it appears in the news more frequently, which has caused employers to take notice. This is a great opportunity for those who want to enter this field. Even if you don’t see yourself engaging in health care work (or any other healthcare-related work), there are still plenty of opportunities out there for you to learn about it and get your foot in the door.
Every month or so, I get an email from someone who wants to know how they can get into healthcare and what they need to do to get started. The answers are always similar:
Conclusion
A lot of people dream of a career in product development, but few actually get to do it. After all, no one really wants to work in the software industry; you either want to be an engineer or be a designer. In this day and age, however, companies are growing revenue by hiring engineers as well as designers — making it almost impossible for anyone with a degree in design to find a job in the field.
What you need to do is understand what kind of skills you will have and then take steps towards becoming one. The vast majority of jobs out there aren’t technical — they require skills in design, business development, marketing and more — so you need to know those skills if you want to make it into them.
Here are some resources that will help:
- Designing & Development: A Complete Resource for Designers
- Think Like A Product Designer: A Great Course for Developers Who Want To Learn More About Designing Products
- Product Management: A Complete Guidebook For Those Who Want To Do It Right
- The Absolute Beginner’s Guide To Product Development
If reading isn’t your thing — there are plenty of online courses on YouTube that can give you an idea on how to make the most out of your degree (and potentially develop some skills too). You can also rely on several different kinds of jobs from companies such as Adobe (Adobe Developer Jobs) or Corel (Corel Developer Jobs). One important thing is that different companies have different job requirements. If you have good communication skills and experience working with both types of people then a core developer position would be ideal for you. Most importantly, though, don’t worry about meeting all the requirements right at the start; instead focus on getting yourself up to speed as quickly as possible and then focusing on specific positions that interest you. And remember that every job has things that it likes more than others!