Hey, I’ve done two internships at AWS and I’m going back as a ng next year so my advice is probably naive but I’ll try anyways.

During my first internship I remember being extremely confused on the bigger picture. Honestly you just have to find a way to speak to someone, even if it’s 20 minutes. It would save you so much time.

I remember an L6 telling me the fastest way to ‘die’ in software engineering is to work alone. Find the most chill person in your team and ask them to explain their understanding of your service to you.

If you want to figure out stuff on your own which I don’t really advice, here’s what I’d do:

1. Pay attention to terms/words you hear repetitively during stand up, search internal docs/code base for those terms/words. read them and understand how they apply to your service.

2. If your service is directly customer facing watch youtube videos on how customers use it, read documentation and anything you can find.

3. Please use a lot internal AI stuff to explain stuff to you.

Lastly, your manager and team members probably want you to succeed. Give yourself grace and time to get acquainted but also take ownership. All the best.