>I legitimately can't tell what mindset you're railing against

Basically that there's some "chain" of dependencies, impossible to overcome when it comes to career

like previously quoted statement for me sounds like

good gpa -> good first job -> fast path to high tc jobs

mediocre gpa -> mediocre job -> a lot of other not fancy jobs -> high tc job after a lot of years

What I'm saying is that "And your first job determines your second one" is not true (except edge cases like govt jobs).

You can start your career at the most unknown company in country and still manage to jump to the top companies

>or what "skew the odds" means in this context?

Just because the odds are not favoring you, it's still doable

It's not impossible to overcome, but it does take time. Time your earning less money than you would be.

Time to build up a competitive resume so you get an interview despite a lower GPA, and time to study so that when you do get the interview you leave a better impression to make up for the poor GPA.

Generally the whole "GPA" importance concept is crazy to me, because in my country I've never heard anyone ever being asked about it

I don't even remember my GPA because I've seen it maybe twice - once when I received diploma and second time when I've been going thru my documents and just wanted to check out of curiosity

It's so flawed metrics that I'd never even consider it as reasonable when interviewing people

In my early career I've had several recruiters who were very interested in me based on my resume, had several conversations and then when they found out my GPA said they couldn't place me.

Also had several jobs I wanted that required a certain GPA even 5-10 years into my career.