GPA (and major of course) can matter right out of school. It's hard for me to imagine in most circumstances though someone scouring a transcript, if they even ask for one, to see if someone took some easier classes as electives.

Yeah, GPA might matter for your first job, but it won't for the second.

no one is going to bother looking at a transcript, but fresh graduates should definitely list any challenging/relevant electives they took on their resume (and be prepared to answer some basic questions). if you don't list anything challenging that wasn't a core requirement, it kinda implies you took the softball approach.

Indeed it's pretty rare. I've only seen GPA's when someone offers them or brings their transcript to an interview.

I've heard that Epic Systems has a hard GPA threshold for their programming jobs.