#52Women52Weeks: Watch your mouth! The honest confessions of a teenager in tech with Quymbee Chen

Quymbee Chen is a teenage girl (19 years old) working as the Community Manager for start-up tech company, Jewelbots, as a part of her gap year. Quymbee started out interning for Jewelbots when she was a Sophomore at specialized school, Bronx High School of Science, and begun working full time once she graduated.

1. How did you go from high school intern to full time employee?

I was an intern in high school working for Jewelbots. I fit closer to their audience range than any of the employees themself, so I had a lot of fun helping to give them feedback on tends, language usage, and branding opinions.

I started working with Jewelbots even when it was still on Kickstarter. I have seen how the product has grown and developed as I helped to test the prototypes and gotten to known the audience. It only seemed natural to become a full time employee when I graduated high school since I was in love with everything about the product and I didn’t need any training.

2. What's it like being a teenager in the tech industry?

It's sometimes overwhelming to be a teenager in the tech industry because there are many things that the whole room seems to know except you. However, in such a scenario, it's important to remember not to be afraid to ask questions and persevere!

Although the tech industry is scary in the way that it’s always changing and adapting, it is also a lot of fun to work in such a field because I am always learning new skills and information constantly. It’s good to be kept on your toes.

3. How would you advice others to find a job in tech like you did?

Be in love with what you do. Work for a company or product that you support wholly. When you do that your work and effort seems to go beyond expectations.

Finding Jewelbots was luck. It was my own passion for the product that drew me to working for a tech company like Jewelbots.

4. What are some of the skills you're learning working with Jewelbots?

Working with Jewelbots has helped me to learn a lot of different things. We're a startup company with a small team, so everyone has to do a variety of tasks in order to make up for the lack of people. That being said, I try to help out as much as I can with the skills I have, while also trying to adapt with new skills to keep up.

There are two main skills I would have to say I have learned: Customer service and audience targeting.

I have found that working with customer service is really just as horrible as everyone makes it out to be! The trick is to not take things personally, but take it with a grain of salt. When you help to create a product, it’s hard to not take complaints or criticism as direct attacks on your hard work (not that all our customer emails are negative, but they’re the ones that stick out to me personally). It is even harder to hold my tongue and remember what I say is in reflection of an entire company. It’s in my nature as a teenager to want to rashly speak out my opinion and give a piece of my mind as if there were no consequences, but there are for me. The other day my boyfriend was saying that I should watch my mouth on Twitter because I represent something other than myself now. And so I guess what I’m trying to say is that working with Jewelbots has obviously helped me learn the practical professional skill of customer service work, but also self control.

Since the beginning of my work with Jewelbots, I have always focused on audience targeting. It’s obviously important to make the product interesting and desirable to the audience you're selling towards. However, there’s a lot that goes into it—especially with social media to keep in mind. As Community Manager at Jewelbots, I focus on making content for our audience, which is 13-16 year old girls. This involves photography, reaching out to public figures, and of course clever tweeting!

It’s a creative challenge to make STEM cool and trendy, especially pre-teen and teen girls. I feel like this is where most of my work as a teen comes in, since I do put my own voice into it a lot. When you’re influencing an entire audience of young minds, there’s pressure to put out the right message. For instance, working towards equality in STEM, but exclusively advertising towards girls, people ask, “What about the boys? Is that really equal?” It gets frustrating! However, you just have to continue to stick by your purpose. It’s rewarding since we do get messages from girls reaching out to tell us that they appreciate what Jewelbots stands for. It's those messages that motivate me to keep going!

5. Will you be studying STEM in college?

Yes. Wanting to study STEM in college has been an interesting conflict for me though. It’s been a inner struggle to realize my own purpose of studying STEM. Is it because I grew up with a mathematician programmer-type of Dad who has always bumper-bowled me in that direction? Is it because, as a female, I want to make a statement against gender stereotypes? One thing I know is that when I first made the decision, it wasn’t for myself.

Now, after working with Jewelbots, it feels like another layer of pressure to study STEM since our company mission is to expand girls interests towards STEM. Would I be hypocritical if I don’t enter STEM after all that I’ve advocated?

But also working at Jewelbots, I’ve had to program...well, Jewelbots! I’m not responsible for the actual firmware and building of the product itself. However, in our Jewelbot community forums, I am responsible for helping to debug our customer’s code, writing cool ideas for people to try, and solving problems. I code the Jewelbot like a user would, and it really is exciting when I can get something to work!

I help to write the instructions for the Getting Started website on Jewelbots, so this involves a bit of website programming to display the content up. Although HTML and CSS is relative simple, it’s still fun to get it done. Although I’m not the type of person that codes a thousand lines a day as a hobby, programming and STEM is something I enjoy to do nonetheless.

The first time I was applying to college, I wanted to be “college-bound”. This time applying, I want to learn.

Taking a breath and standing back, I tell myself that I want to study STEM in college. I want to study it for myself. After being in an actual career environment, I may have work experience, but I don’t have the actual skills to contribute as much as I’d like—yet.

Link with Quymbee Chen HERE

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