At my first internship, I was more dead weight than productive, but by my last three I was a contributor to many nontrivial projects.
Those experiences (1) were absolutely invaluable in my growth into a capable engineer (2) gave me a sharp perception of what life is like at different-stage companies (headcount 5-10 to headcount 5000+), and (3) gave me an idea of how “industry trends” actually manifested in different companies. By the end of my years in college, it seemed like these experiences had put me on a different track, career-wise, even though I was no smarter than my peers.
Friends who had maxed out their investment in GPA and personal projects were in a relative bubble. They could crack the coding interview, but didn’t know their way around a shell, or what the relative risks of adopting one database over another might be. In hindsight, I guess these internships might have leapfrogged me past the “junior engineer” phase. In any case, the experience had positive impacts on my career.
I guess it might not be a path for everyone (and I’m very grateful for those first few companies that paid me for those relatively unproductive summers), but I agree that these kinds of expected-to-be-unproductive incubative periods are under-looked milestones to growth that I can’t recommend enough, especially if you get them at completely different places.