Meeting… Jessie Wu, Software Engineer at The New York Times
By: The Nyt Open Team
Tags: Women In Tech, Nyt Open Meeting, Software Development, Code, CRM

Meeting… Jessie Wu, Software Engineer at The New York Times

Illustration by Claire Merchlinsky

What is your name?

Jessie Wu

What are your pronouns?

She/Her

What is your job?

I’m a full-stack engineer with a focus in UX engineering for the Care Platforms team.

What does that mean?

The Care Platforms team works on the customer relationship management, or CRM, software that our call center agents use for customer accounts, as well as the interactive voice response system behind 1–800-NYTIMES.

As a full-stack engineer, I focus on converting designs to code, building out our design system, optimizing the workflows between design, dev and business, and I advocate for our users.

How long have you been at The Times?

A little over a year.

Most Times employees are working remotely right now. Where are you working from these days?

Crown Heights, Brooklyn, a neighborhood where people still say hi to each other in passing.

How do you start your day?

I start with a heavy breakfast and a quick meditation to mentally prepare for the day.

What is something you’ve worked on recently?

The Care team just started a diversity, equity and inclusion working group to complement the DEI efforts being done by the wider Times company. and I am working on strategies for hiring and sourcing opportunities to diversify our pipeline and career management within our team. It is at a very grassroots level and I am grateful we have the support from our team leads.

Tell us about a project you’ve worked on at The Times that you’re especially proud of.

My team and I received a Publisher’s Award last year for building the automated phone system for 1–800-NYTIMES. I learned how to build chatbots with Amazon Web Services, and I will never look at bots, voice-activated smart devices or calling customer service the same way again.

What was your first job?

I was 10 when I started working at my parents’ restaurant. I went from packing to-gos to running the restaurant over the span of 16 years. In 2018, I was able to take a two-week vacation; it was the first one I’d taken since I was a kid.

What is something most people don’t know about you?

I took wheelchair dancing classes when I worked with people with disabilities. I used to take multiple trips driving this large cargo van to transport everyone to the studio where we would learn how to dance salsa and ballroom.We learned how to take the lead and maneuver around our dancing partners in wheelchairs. I was not very good at it; I was much better at driving the cargo van.

What is your secret to career success?

Invest in yourself: take advantage of education stipends, take initiative for career development and take care of your mental well-being.

Invest in your team because when your colleagues succeed, so do you. Bring the best out of everyone and see their potential. When you treat people with respect you open up opportunities and referrals down the line. My favorite quote by Maya Angelou is, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

What is your superpower?

I am very fast at making Slack emojis and gifs of my team members.

What are you inspired by?

There have been a few conference talks that changed my perspective and shaped who I am today. Anjuan’s Lending Privilege made me realize being privileged doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing; use your privilege to lift others up with you. The other one is bdougie’s Swift vs. React Native talk where he compared the two languages to Taylor Swift and Kanye West. Since then, I tend to gravitate towards using analogies and gifs in my presentations.

Name one thing you’re excited about right now.

I am really into the Buy Nothing movement and similar local Facebook groups where people in your neighborhood give or lend each other things for free. Someone gave me their 100-percent silk Chinese comforter that reminded me of my childhood. I’ve seen posts looking for things like loft beds and people have actually replied saying they have one that they are happy to give away! Someone even lent me their steam mop.

What is your best advice for someone starting to work in your field?

Learn how to ask for help efficiently: explain the task you’re trying to accomplish, the steps you took, what you think the possible solutions are and where you are stuck. By looking into possible approaches, you’re doing half of the work for the other person.

Also, when it comes to debugging CSS for layouts and styling in general, it helps to add background colors or borders around elements to better understand their relationship to each other.