Choosing the Wrong SWE Commitments in College?

I think we come from the same undergrad so I think I can better advise you. My guess is Cornell? I'm an alum so I can give you a lot more detail into each one. Just lmk.

Also, you should mention research. You won't get many opportunities to publish in industry unless you're in a research-oriented role, and if you're interested in ML, then a publication to NuerIPs or ICML is probably much more impactful than doing an ML role. In fact, if you're doing something specialized (robotics, ML, OS), a publication in that field is a very good way to differentiate yourself. I remember one time during an HM interview where my HM was so impressed that I did a robotics publication as an undergrad that they accidentally said I'll be expecting an offer.

For the third point, you're better off spending that time for interview prep over side projects. I was involved in engineering-focused student orgs back then and I listed those as my side project.

One thing with student orgs is that you want to make sure that:

1. Your growth is uncapped and your team is motivated. Sometimes with student teams, not everyone is super motivated, and sometimes you'll feel like you're putting a lot of effort but you don't get anywhere because your teammates aren't putting in as much work.
2. You're building new features as opposed to maintaining existing ones. This depends on the student org and product maturity, so get a sense on what the product roadmap looks like
3. You're actively growing the user base. This means going and talking to users, listening to feedback and implementing it. Not offloading product development work to someone else. Whenever I talk about my startup in interviews, HMs and interviewers were most excited when I talked about scoping out features with customers, how I measure success and respond to customer feedback. The surprising thing I learned when talking about my startup is that HMs aren't interested in implementation details, but are interested in the soft skills necessary to listen and iterate on customer feedback. This is much, much more interesting and harder to do.
4. Probably the most important aspect is culture. You can work on the sexiest project but if your teammates are unmotivated or you're doing unimpactful things, then you might as well have not done it at all. Make sure you ask about team commitment before you join.

Reflecting on my own experiences, I suggest you try as many activities for one semester, see what works/aligns with your interests, then go deep into one. The reason I suggest this is because the time frame for college is extremely short, and you need to balance exploration/exploitation. Trying all three in a semester gives you plenty of time to explore, and that'll give you the necessary signals to go deep into one.

Dang, your career path looks pretty good so far, far better than mine when I was in school hehe:

• Cornell student
• Upcoming FAANG internship
• Multiple opportunities to build legit software as part of school

The first option looks awesome IMHO, and you should do it if the group behind it is good and you have the time. 8,000+ users is almost 5 digits (i.e. should be impressive to recruiters), and you are uniquely positioned to build a good product there as the tool is student-facing (i.e. part of your life organically). It's sort of like a super-leveled up side project.

Just go build cool stuff!

Check out this thread as well (also from an Amazon intern in school): "How to make the most of my time in school?"