i think my point is that your first job, and/or grad school studies, have extremely far-reaching effects on your life trajectory.

for example, if i had good grades, i'd probably have gone to work for a google-esque company, or gone to grad school, and i would NOT have started a tech business.

my life would have been completely different if i had good grades.

And #1 definitely isn't always true in my experience. I'd guess that smaller companies are less likely to care about grades.

GPA is maybe a useful indicator of work ethic, but there are so many factors it's hard to be sure of that.

I also found that your second professional job depends heavily on your first professional job, which in turn depends on your GPA.

I wouldn't discount the importance of your GPA.

Even big ones don't necessarily care. I worked for Sun Micro right out of grad school, and nobody ever asked to look at my transcript. I've heard intel did.

They matter a lot for grad school, though.