AWS Internship Week 1 Reflections

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• Am I Dreaming?

One day before starting, I visited the office and still can’t believe this is real! Despite reading mixed reviews about Amazon online, my first week has been great!

• The Overwhelming Onboarding

As expected, the first week involved orientation sessions, and setting up my laptop and IDE. Being an SDE means I also have to complete an additional SDE bootcamp. There’s a Slack channel where interns can seek help for code reviews. TBH, seeing others’ progress and late-night messages makes me a bit nervous.

• Heartwarming Team Support

My manager, mentor, and onboarding buddy have been incredibly supportive, checking in on me even when they are not in the office sometimes. They often encourage me by saying, “Many of us were interns once too!” Despite learning much, I’m grateful for my team’s support.

• Passionate and Proactive

Everyone here is so proactive. Even though individuals have their own responsibilities, if there’s an opportunity to improve something for the customer, discussions are immediately initiated. My team hosts a week-long hackathon every six months to develop new product ideas for customers or address pain points in our work. Today, I had the chance to participate and was blown away by the innovative pitches and discussions. Each MVP has great potential.

• The Document Culture

From Monday until now, I’ve spent a lot of time reading documents. Despite feeling overwhelmed by the numerous acronyms and links to other documents, I admire the company’s culture of documenting everything clearly for future reference.