Bad Review for WGU: Dishonest, Incompetent, and Unreliable

[Merlin]

Regarding the CS program, would GPA matter for the job opportunities after graduating with the CS degree? I have heard some say that it only matters for some jobs where there is a GPA cutoff but only up to that point.

You don't even need a Computer Science degree to get a job at Google.

There is a guy that got a Math degree, had not done any coding whatsoever in school.  After he graduated he decided to try coding so he took a 3-month boot camp which he paid $17,000 for.  Within 6 months he got a job at Google.

Now he did graduate from an Ivey League school so that did probably help, but the point is worry about building your skills and you'll be fine.

The lack of a degree, a degree in non-CS discipline, and/or a degree from a non-elite school, are generally less stigmatized in the tech industry than in other industries. At least here in the SF Bay/Silicon Valley area. As a hiring manager, I know that I end to focus more on accomplishments and technical credentials (certifications) than degrees for the most part.

Heck, I've found that most of my best junior programmer hires over the years have been people who were self-taught rather than new grads with CS degrees. In my experience, the higher the academic degree the more people tend to overengineer. However, self-taught programmers tend to focus more on minimal solutions that get the job done without all the extra fluff. Sometimes they need to work on error checking and commenting, but they're efficient.

So, yeah, it is very possible to get a job at places like Google, Facebook, and Amazon without a degree at all. It'll help to have a referral to get your resume looked at, but you just need a strong resume and a portfolio of shipped products (and/or open-source contributions) to demonstrate you have the right skills to win an interview. After that, it comes down to how well you can think on your feet during the various interviews (usually this means multiple rounds of whiteboard coding and systems design interviews, along with at least one behavioral interview, and a management interview if you're looking for a lead role).