Will a low-ish GPA ruin my chances at Google, Facebook, etc.? I have (nearly) a year of experience out of college as an engineer at a small company doing some pretty interesting work, some machine learning algorithms. I'd like to make the jump to Google, Facebook, etc. but am afraid that even if I pass the interviews I'll just get turned down by the hiring committee because my GPA is ~3.2. FWIW, I went to a top 20 school and the degree was in math, and I have some unusual academic accomplishments like a published paper. I just really screwed up one year due to a period of depression and that is responsible for my low GPA. If not for that year, it would be 3.8 or so. As a result, my transcript is confusing: three extraordinary years and one shockingly bad year.

Anyway, I've heard horror stories of people investing significant time interviewing at these places only to be suddenly turned down right before the offer because their GPA was "unhireable."