Why a business manager taught himself to code

I’m not a software engineer. I want to get that out of the way first, because the engineers I work with will read this.

But I can build things. Small tools, prototypes, landing pages, automations that save someone on my team an hour every week. Nobody taught me. I learned the way most people learn anything these days: a problem in front of me, a lot of searching, and a lot of things that didn’t work the first time.

It started with waiting

Early in my career I was on the marketing side. Every time I had an idea that needed a website change, a form, or a simple tool, it went into someone else’s queue. Sometimes it came back in a week. Sometimes it never came back.

I don’t blame anyone for that. Their priorities were different from mine. But I got tired of waiting, so I started doing the small things myself. Then slightly bigger things.

What it changed

The obvious benefit is speed. If I can build a rough version of an idea over a weekend, I can show it to people on Monday instead of describing it in a meeting. A working prototype answers questions that a slide deck can’t.

The less obvious benefit is judgement. When you have built even simple things, you get a feel for what is easy and what is hard. You stop asking for “a quick change” that is actually three weeks of work. And you can tell when someone is overcomplicating something that should be simple.

That matters a lot in my current role, where I sit across commercial, sales and marketing, technology and operations. A lot of decisions sit right where business meets tech. Knowing a bit of both helps me ask better questions.

Where I draw the line

Self-taught has limits. I know where mine are.

If something needs to be secure, scalable, or maintained by a team for years, it goes to people who do this properly. My job is to get the idea far enough that it’s clear whether it’s worth their time. Studying cyber security later made me even more careful here. A lot of “quick fixes” are how problems get in.

If you’re thinking about it

You don’t need to become a developer. Pick one annoying, repetitive thing in your week and try to automate it. That one small win teaches you more than any course, and it’s a lot more satisfying.