Whether they're building a car or a smartphone app, companies that make stuff tend to have the same kinds of roles, split between inventing the stuff, producing the stuff, and selling the stuff. In some companies each of these roles is a separate department; other companies might combine Production and Quality Control or Marketing and Sales, for example.
- Research and Development: These are the engineering types who are typically hired for their technical skills. They love to make stuff, they like challenges, and are fond of solutions that don't just work, but work elegantly (meaning they're clever and efficient). Some companies split pure Research (finding a solution to a technical problem) from Development (making the Research solutions into buildable, sellable products). A good R&D department needs input from customers (either directly or through Marketing) to understand what the real problems are. A bad R&D department elegantly solves really tough technical problems that no one cares about.
- Production (Manufacturing): The Production or Manufacturing dept obviously makes the stuff that the company sells. But it has to work closely with Development and Research to make sure that what comes out of Development is something that can be built, tested, and maintained at a profit. Good production people are very process oriented; they want to do things according to the book with no deviations, and they pay attention to the details.
- Quality Control (Testing): It's the job of the QC folks to make sure that what comes out of Production actually works. In company that manufactures stuff, they will devise tests that every product (or a sample from a production batch) has to pass before it is shipped. In a software company, QC usually works with the developers to find bugs (although many companies are letting their customers take on the QC task).
- Shipping: Big companies and those that deal with big or delicate or expensive or huge numbers of items will have a separate dept devoted to packaging and shipping the stuff quickly and efficiently. Sometimes figuring out the fastest and cheapest way to deliver the stuff becomes very complicated and is called Logistics.
- Customer Support: Once the product is in the customer's hot little hands, they'll contact Customer Support if they have questions or anything goes wrong. Companies want to spend as little on CS as possible, so they should invest a lot of time in building reliable, robust and easy to understand products. But they can also cut costs by outsourcing CS and putting up online support forums so customers can help each other.
- Marketing: It's Marketing's job to understand what customers need and will pay for (these are two different things). This can be a challenge because sometimes the customers themselves don't know. There are two kinds of Marketers: the Listeners and the Talkers. The Listeners try to understand what people want by figuring out what their problems are and finding out what solutions will work. The Talkers tell people what their problems are and show them how the company can solve them. Both can be successful.
- Sales: The Sales dept is the connection to the outside world. The job of Sales is finding people who have problems that the company's products can solve at a price they can afford. You'd like to think that Sales is a rational process of evaluating customer needs and demonstrating the value (cost vs. benefit) of the product as a solution. In practice, emotions and personalities can play a large part in Sales and really good salespeople know when to use an argument and when to use emotion. Good salespeople are special folks: they are competitive, compassionate, and each lost sale makes them try harder on the next one.
