This past week was my last week as an intern at Amazon. It was an incredible experience, where I learned not only a lot about programming and code, but about the deployment cycle, what work is like, and so many more things.

What I worked on

Unfortunately, I cannot go into much detail about what I worked on this Summer. I will say that it was an internal developer tool that is frequently used by engineers. I worked with APIs in Java and connecting them to an AngularJS frontend, so it was a good full-stack experience. The other interns mostly worked on internal developer tools that utilized more AWS services like AWS Lambda, Redshift, Cloudwatch, etc so they gained a lot of experience working with those services, while I mostly gained experience with web development. I also worked on automatically resolving some tickets that have been taking up a lot of engineer time.

Things I learned

• Programming is not just about coding. There is a lot more to programming like communicating, designing, researching and analyzing
• I spend most of my time at work researching/figuring out how to code stuff and debugging
• how APIs work and how they connect a backend and a frontend
• Got experience with AngularJS and Java full stack development
• Amazon employees really REALLY live by the Leadership Principles so if you ever want to work at Amazon, make sure you embody these and show it off in your interview
• How to use AWS services like Step Functions, SNS and Lambda

Best moments

• Playing ping pong at lunch
• Going to Seattle and participating in the internal intern hackathon
• Getting the rare free lunch
• Finally finishing tasks that gave me so much trouble during the internship
• Going out with the other amazing interns

I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity given to me. I learned that I still have a whole lot to learn and I am incredibly excited to take on this challenge. I am also excited to announce I was offered a return offer and am definitely considering going back. I would especially love to go to a new city like Seattle or San Francisco to get a feel of the adult life. I’ve never been anywhere outside of BC for an extended period.