Starting my first day and I was assigned an onboarding buddy. I was wondering what are some of the main questions I should ask.
Some questions I have asked:
I'm wondering if there are any other main ones I should be asking or is it just ask as they come along?
Those are all good tactical questions, and I have the following additional recommendations:
After you get more settled in (1-2 weeks in), I would ask more "meta" questions about performance like:
I also recommend checking out this Q&A around how long your first ticket should take, which also links a bunch of useful resources for onboarding.
Lastly, you should also leverage your onboarding buddy as a feedback source in general and start proactively looking for real feedback every week after your first week. Onboarding is such a crucial time, and it's important to knock it out of the park when you work at a FAANG company like Amazon. Here's my advice on how to get that feedback and get a lot out of this mentorship in general.
Those questions feel like a good start! I especially like asking about the meetings since that gives you context on how the team operates and how the organization is structured. A few other questions to ask:
All of these build on this notion of context: you want to understand the history of the team, understand what is prioritized, and what the learnings were.
As an entry-level engineer, you should also spend a lot of time shipping code. So I'd ask questions around what ideas your onboarding buddy has for well-scoped projects that don't have many gatekeepers. These projects/areas of the codebase are really valuable to dive in and make some changes.
Finally, one last note: you can (and should) ask these questions of people beyond your onboarding buddy! Don't limit your interaction to just your assigned buddy.
Check out these good responses from Alex: