Marketers Are the New Programmers. Code at the Speed of Speech
Programmers have always been translators between business and machine. But what happens when translation is no longer needed? What happens when the machine finally learns to understand us directly?
The Scary Numbers
Google now generates over 25% of its new code using AI. Salesforce automates 30-50% of its workload. Meta laid off 21,000 employees in a single “year of efficiency.” Over 400,000 tech workers lost their jobs in 2023-2024 alone. The World Economic Forum predicts 41% of employers will reduce their workforce due to AI in the next five years. You’ve probably seen these headlines. You’ve probably thought: “Well, that’s their problem.” Here’s the thing. It’s not their problem anymore. It’s an opportunity wearing a disguise.
My Problem Was Simple. The Solution Used to Be Expensive.
I’m a marketing director (CMO). One of my jobs is to help find the best locations for our business expansion. This means analyzing competitors, metro stations, shopping malls, mobile operator data based on our clients’ phone numbers, foot city traffic patterns by hour and day of the week, and dozens of other variables that used to live in separate Google Maps, spreadsheets, and someone’s head. My team needed a tool that could bring all of this together. Not a PowerPoint presentation :). Not another “let’s discuss this in the meeting.” An actual working product.
The classic approach would involve briefing developers, explaining business logic to people who’ve never stepped into our industry, waiting weeks for something that almost works, and then spending more weeks explaining why it doesn’t. I had better things to spend money on and far more better things to do in my life. So I spent $100 a month on Claude Code instead.
Three Days. Twenty-Eight Versions. Zero Lines of Code Written by Me.
Here’s what happened next. I recorded voice interviews with my colleagues who would actually use this tool. I asked them what they need, how they work, and what drives them crazy about existing solutions. Then I transcribed everything with ElevenLabs, fed it to Claude Code, and said: “Build this.” Three days later, I had a working service. Not a prototype. Not a demo. A full web-hosted application with multi-user access, role-based permissions, heatmaps showing population movement by hour, infrastructure layers for metro stations and shopping centers, and the ability to upload custom maps from any stakeholder in our company or data provider. Twenty-eight versions in three days.
BTW, each major version gets its own pixel art mascot (my invention), because why not bring some joy into development?
Domain Expertise Is the New Code
The reality is simple but uncomfortable for some. Domain expertise plus AI tools beats pure coding skill. Every time. A programmer can write perfect code, but they cannot understand why a fitness club location near a metro station matters differently at 7 AM versus 7 PM. They cannot feel the business intuition built over years of opening locations, failing, learning, and opening again. That intuition used to require translation. Now it speaks directly to the machine. Think about it. Who knows your business better than you? Who understands the subtle patterns, the unwritten rules, the “we tried that in 2019, and it didn’t work” knowledge that lives in your team’s collective memory? That knowledge is the real competitive advantage. Code is just a way to express it. And now, that expression comes naturally.
This Isn’t About Killing Jobs. It’s About Creating New Ones.
This isn’t about programmers losing their jobs. It’s about them finding new ones. The ones who adapt will become the architects of AI-assisted systems, the quality controllers of machine output, the specialists who handle what AI cannot. The ones who refuse to see the change will struggle. But that’s true for every profession facing transformation. The difference is that non-technical experts now have superpowers we never had before. We can build, test, iterate, and ship products at the speed of thought. We can stop waiting for someone to understand our requirements and start creating solutions ourselves.
Your Turn
If you’re a marketer, sales director, business analyst, or anyone who has ever felt frustrated explaining your needs to developers, this is your moment. Stop outsourcing your ideas. Start building them yourself. Experiment. Try creating something small first. Ask questions. Fail fast. Learn faster. The tools are ready and more accessible than ever. The only thing missing is your curiosity and willingness to try.
I write about this and other journeys at Restless Brain. If you want to discuss, challenge, or just ask how the hell I did this, reply to this article or an email you’re reading now. I read every single one. I'm asking you to let me help you get rid of old-style ways of doing THINGS!