Women in Tech Who Don’t Code: What a Decade Taught Me

You do not need to write code to build in tech. You need to understand the people the code is for.

When I joined my first software company, I was the first person on the marketing team and only the second woman in the office. People asked me the same two questions. Some assumed I had a computer science degree. Others raised an eyebrow and asked what someone with a business degree does at a tech company.

I did not have a clean answer then. I do now.

The question has changed

Back then the conversation was code versus no code. Today I lead business development for 30+ products across WordPress, SaaS and Shopify apps within WPDeveloper and Storeware with a team of around 120 people and co-founded xCloud. I still do not write code. What changed is how little that matters to the outcome.

Products rarely fail because the code was bad. Far more often they fail because nobody knew they existed, nobody understood why they mattered or the team built for a customer who was never there. Those are not engineering problems. They are positioning, storytelling, support, hiring and operations problems. That is where much of the real work in a tech company lives.

So who are the women in tech who don’t code?

She is the marketer who finds the one sentence that makes a product click. The designer who notices where users get lost. The support lead who hears a problem before the dashboards show it. The account manager who keeps the biggest customer from leaving. The HR lead who builds the team and the operations lead who keeps it running.

In most tech companies, women are still a small share of the team. Many of them in that share do not write code. They are not on the edge of the industry. They are holding a large part of it together.

What AI changes for us

AI has quietly redrawn the line. Today I can describe an idea to an AI agent and see a working prototype the same evening. A marketer can test a landing page, analyze a campaign or automate a report without waiting in a developer’s queue.

That does not make engineers less important. It makes judgment more important. When anyone can generate an output, the advantage moves to the person who knows which problem is worth solving and who it is for. That has always been home ground for people who do not code.

If you are starting out

• Learn the product deeper than anyone expects. You do not need to write it, but you should be able to explain how it works and why it matters.
• Sit close to customers. Support tickets, reviews and sales calls teach more than any course.
• Use AI as your technical teammate. Ask it to explain the code, build the first draft and check your thinking.
• Speak up early. The first marketer or the only woman in the room often sees what the room is missing.
• Find your people. Communities like WordPress, JCI and local tech meetups opened more doors for me than any job title.

And if coding excites you, learn it. This is not an argument against code. It is an argument against the idea that code is the only way in.

The answer I give now

When someone asks what a person with a business degree does at a tech company, I smile and say: the same thing everyone else here does. We build. Some of us just build with words, people and ideas.

If you are a woman in tech who does not code, I would love to hear your story. Say hi.