Pros
Massive real-world scale: You ship features that instantly serve millions of customers—priceless experience for any new grad. Ownership culture: Even as an intern I was trusted to design, implement, test, and operate my service end-to-end—great confidence-builder. Mentorship & feedback loops: Weekly 1-on-1s with my manager and a dedicated intern mentor kept me unblocked and constantly improving. Top-tier tooling & learning resources: Internal docs, builder-tools, and recorded tech talks made ramp-up surprisingly smooth. Comp & perks: Competitive pay, relocation stipend, housing allowance, and intern-only events (tech summits, Amazon Future Engineer Day) added huge value.
Kontras
On-call shadowing can be intense: Pager alerts at odd hours—even as “shadow”—made it hard to fully disconnect some evenings. Steep learning curve: AWS ecosystem & internal processes feel overwhelming the first few weeks; expect to drink from a firehose. Team experience varies: Your summer can differ wildly based on org; some teams ship production code, others focus on proof-of-concepts. Documentation gaps: Older services still lack up-to-date runbooks, so tribal knowledge is real.