AWS Internship Week 4 Reflections

If you are not a member of Medium, please click here to read :)

This week has been all about frantically writing low-level design docs, which has been quite a unique experience. After chatting with other interns, I realized that not every intern gets to write their own design doc — it depends on the team’s arrangement. Fortunately, I happen to be one of the lucky ones 🥹

Amazon’s design docs follow a specific writing logic: start with an Overview introducing which team the design belongs to, who the customer is, and the objectives. Then discuss the customer’s pain points, the real problem, and the business benefits the company can gain after implementation. Finally, it covers the entire system and product design.

As an INTJ, of course, I dive into the details, writing comprehensively and including visuals. In the end, I received a very thorough review. However, since some infra designs still need further discussion with senior members, I estimate that the final draft can only be completed next week. After the holidays, I will finalize it with the Leadership team before starting implementation.

Aside from being Customer-obsessed, another unique Amazon culture is Ownership. In our team, we don’t have a PM because, this is because as an SDE, we should take responsibility for our products. This means that from understanding development requirements and UI Mockups to the final production, both frontend and backend, we handle everything ourselves. Honestly, I still can’t imagine that in 10 weeks, my product will be able to launch on our SAS Dashboard. But at least going through the entire process gives me a very complete understanding and experience of the workflow.