Understand the product flow.
- Ask engineers which component is for which functionality.
- Then come to that component and see the flow and functions which are there and also see from where they are being imported.
For backend
1.Create a map of DB tables
2.Go to the model views and controllers if they exist.
3.understand the dependency.
4.also see what queries are running.
5. What kind of cron jobs or Background services are there.
I have limited experience of 1.5 years as a Frontend engineer, so I can say this as an overview.
Hope you understood.
And if there's a. Function you can't understand then copy paste in gpt and ask what it does and how it is working, explain line by line