What do I think will be my biggest challenge at my internship?

 Although I am an intern with the OneDrive SharePoint organization, my internship project largely contributes to Android and iOS versions of Microsoft Teams. I think my biggest challenge at the internship will be finding contacts in Microsoft Teams, which is a completely different organization from OneDrive SharePoint, to ask questions about my project. Few of the engineers on my OneDrive SharePoint team have worked on Mobile application development, with none working on Microsoft Teams phone application clients. This is frightening because it means I will not have direct contacts within my team to ask questions relating to the Android or iOS application development part of my project. This will require building connections in the Microsoft Teams organization that I can reach out to with application development questions.

On Wednesday, I looked at the organizational chart to see if there are software engineers who develop for the Android and iOS clients of Microsoft Teams. I noted down a few names that might be able to help. However, I am not entirely sure if they have worked on the specific part of the applications that related to my project. My mentor also suggested some people in the Microsoft Teams team that she has worked with in the past.

It might surprise many that my biggest challenge is less about the new programming languages that I will be required to learn for the project but more about who to reach out to when I have technical questions. I know I will learn the programming languages and other technical skills required because I have previously participated in two-day hackathons where I learned and developed projects using programming languages at the same time. The reason I am most worried about who to ask questions is because Microsoft code will rarely be solved using solutions from Stack Overflow or other online sites. The bugs are usually internal and only Microsoft employees who have worked with that codebase can help with such challenges. From past internship experience, I have found it helpful to have contacts who have worked with the codebase you are contributing to help answer such questions. Finding such contacts will be a challenge since my project intersects between two organizations with a large part being outside OneDrive SharePoint.