Every company is different, so it is rather hard to make a statement about all industries everywhere. That said companies that make hardware tend to see softwa

Every company is different, so it is rather hard to make a statement about all industries everywhere. That said companies that make hardware tend to see software as easy, they typically will let hardware people do the software as well, or not respect their software developers. This is why printers usually have really shitty drivers. As far as what it like to work as a professional developer. Surely you have had a couple of group projects where you had to code something by now. Beef that up, with a much larger team and much larger time frame. As far as what you do at any of the companies you listed, just think about what they ship. You would take it from version X to version X+1, maybe launch a new product.