Amazon Internship Experience
I started my Six months internship with Amazon on 11th Jan 2021. This was my first internship, I was really very nervous as I wanted to give my 100% and make utmost use of this opportunity for learning and growing.
Any intern’s experience will mostly depend on the team and the project he/she works on. It is possible that you may not be assigned any concrete project but you will be given small ( but important )tasks. It is better to speak with your manager, set clear expectations, and have a complete project assigned to you big/small.
Once you have it, give your best to complete it. And as everyone says, asking questions helps us in understanding and overcoming the knowledge gap/fear. You will get ample amount of information you need from the tree of hyperlinks that you go through. It's overwhelming in the beginning because Amazon has a steep learning curve but do not give up. You’ll make it through.
I interned with the team that deals with providing concessions to customers and worked on a migration project. I would like to share a few factors that helped me excel in the internship.
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- Mentor & Manager’s support:
I consider myself lucky to be part of the team led by supper supportive and understanding manager and working under the guidance of an amazing mentor. It was my mentor who always had my back and always helped me to get unblocked. I never had any deadline pressure either from my mentor or manager. My mentor, not only taught me technical skills but also taught me team/Amazon’s culture. I cannot overemphasize how important it is to have a mentor/manager’s support during an internship.
2. Asking structured doubts to mentor:
Before asking any doubt to your mentor do the research yourself. As your mentor may have other responsibilities too and he/she may not be available all the time. There are a lot of Amazon resources like slack groups and internal websites where someone might have already asked the same question and teammates' suggestions during scrum are always valuable. Initially, things seem to be difficult, and understanding them takes time. Don’t be afraid of working hard. Spend your weekend/free time in upskilling, learn technologies used by your team.
3. Keeping mentor & manager aware of blockers:
Whenever you are blocked on some task, always keep your mentor and manager aware of the blockers. You may get some help in getting unblocked or you may be assigned some other task. Any effort that you put in (big/small) should be called out in stand-ups and written on the task page. This gives visibility to your teammates and they will be aware of what you are doing.
4. Documenting:
Documentation is the most important skill in the tech industry. The two main advantages of documentation are first you don't have to remember anything and second, you have a record for future reference. I learned this skill from my mentor. I use to maintain a record of tasks/work that I did during the internship, which not only helped me in writing the final self-review document but also helped me in tracking the progress of my project.
5. Asking for constant feedback:
1:1 with your mentor or manager is the perfect meeting in which you can ask about your areas of development and area of strengths and work accordingly on your skills. Take all the feedback seriously and try to work on that, this helps in your technical and personal growth.
6. Be curious:
Whenever you have free time explore various internal tools. If possible take courses that are available like I took an ML course when I had time. Know about other projects on which your team is working, if possible schedule 1:1 with other team members and seek guidance from them. This will help you in connecting with other teammates apart from your mentor and manager.
7. Help & appreciate others:
Be a good human, if you have knowledge of something don't hesitate to help/share it with others. Helping/sharing enhances knowledge. Appreciate people who take out time to help you. Everyone likes to be appreciated. My mentor and manager have this amazing quality of appreciating others even for small tasks/work. Appreciating someone boosts their confidence.
8. Have fun:
Having fun while working is very important for sustaining a long time. I use to attend every fun hour and farewell meeting in our team and I did not miss any fun event organized by the internship team. Attending fun meetings helps you in connecting /bonding with other people. If you are just working hard and not having fun how are you going to create history. These are the lines said by my manager. 😊
Apart from these things, staying positive helped me a lot. In this virtual scenario it's very easy to get demotivated/frustrated but always have faith in yourself. If you can come this far then you can go further. It makes a big difference in your life when you stay positive. One last piece of advice “ Give your best, don't be afraid of hard work, and then leave rest to almighty”
Hope this helps someone, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn if you have any questions, and if you liked the article don't forget to clap 😃
Thanks.
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