work experience

you can get real work experience as a teenager without waiting for formal programs or turning 18. startups will hire you if you can demonstrate value. research labs will take you on if you show initiative. and "unglamorous" jobs teach you things that no prestigious internship will.

startup internships via cold email

this is the highest-ROI path for a teen builder. small startups (< 50 people) are always understaffed and will bring on talented people regardless of age — if you can prove you'll contribute.

how I got my startup internship

I interned at a neurotech startup as their youngest intern. I didn't find them through a program or a job board — someone in my network recommended me. but the reason they recommended me is that I had been building things and demonstrating capability for years.

at a neurotech startup, I did real work: EEG, fNIRS, and GVS research on actual brain-computer interface problems. not job shadowing, not busy work — the kind of work that turned into a research paper targeting IEEE TBME.

the lesson: at a 5-20 person company, interns ship features and contribute to research. at a big company, they get a tour and a t-shirt.

the cold email playbook for startups

1. find companies doing work you care about. AngelList, YC's startup directory, Crunchbase, or just search for companies in your field.
2. target < 50 employees. small enough that every person matters, big enough to have some structure.
3. lead with what you'll contribute, not what you'll learn. "I can build X for you" beats "I'd love to learn about Y."
4. include a link to something you've built. a live product, a GitHub repo, a paper — anything that shows you can do work.
5. follow up once after a week. then stop.
6. expect ~5% response rate. send 40 emails, get 2 responses, convert 1. it's a numbers game.

see mentorship-networking for the full cold outreach guide.

research assistant roles

a research organization

• AI regulation dataset work
• scored 200 companies on AI governance practices
• wrote automation code for Google Forms
• the lesson: research assistant work is unglamorous — lots of data entry, scoring, tagging. but it teaches you rigor, and you build relationships with the researchers leading the project.

research positions often lead to co-authorship opportunities. the grunt work gets your foot in the door; the insights you contribute along the way earn you a spot on the paper.

paid work

I-Lab internship (summer 2024)

• paid minimum wage
• learned to use every shop tool — laser cutters, 3D printers, wood shop, metal shop
• built out sections of the shop itself
• the lesson: physical work experience is underrated. learning to use tools, being reliable, showing up on time — these are foundational skills that transfer everywhere. see design-engineering for more on what this unlocked.

a tutoring center (Aug 2024 - May 2025)

• tutoring job, paid
• the lesson: explaining things to people who don't understand them is one of the best ways to deepen your own understanding. tutoring teaches communication, patience, and the ability to meet people where they are. also: having a regular paycheck as a teenager is grounding.

open source contributions

contributing to open source is unpaid work experience that's visible to everyone. I contributed PRs to OpenClaw in April 2026 — bug fixes and improvements. see open-source for the full guide.

open source contributions on your GitHub profile are the most publicly verifiable form of work experience. any hiring manager or startup founder can click through and see exactly what you did.

freelance and contract work

if you can build products, you can do freelance work:

• small businesses that need websites or tools
• individuals who need automation or data work
• other builders who need help with specific features

the rates won't be great at first, but the experience compounds. every client project teaches you to work with requirements, deadlines, and people who aren't technical.

what "work experience" actually teaches you

the specific technical skills matter less than the meta-skills:

• working on someone else's problems. personal projects let you choose what to work on. work doesn't. learning to care about problems that aren't yours is a critical skill.
• operating in a team. communication, coordination, not stepping on each other's code.
• shipping on a deadline. not "when it's ready" but "by Friday."
• dealing with ambiguity. real work rarely comes with clear specifications.
• being reliable. showing up, doing what you said you'd do, following up.

these transfer directly to hackathons, research collaborations, and eventually to building your own company.

the products you ship are your portfolio. the work experience you get validates that you can operate in a professional context. together, they make you a candidate that programs and mentors take seriously.