On the degree thing... I recently got pretty deep into the interview process at Google.  I got through the interviews and did well enough to be recommended to some departments.  The Payments team was interested in me based on my interview results.  Then, my information (resume and interview results) gets handed to the &quot;hiring committee&quot;.  They needed some more information:  specifically, what my years of undergrad were (although that was already on my resume) and what my freaking GPA was (that wasn&#x27;t).  Suffice to say that although I went to Berkeley, my undergrad degree was not CS, and I guess my GPA wasn&#x27;t high enough because I didn&#x27;t get an offer.