hsu

I can help answer #2 and #3.

#2. I received an NSF fellowship in grad school with 6 months of research experience. The experience probably helped, but getting an NSF is a long shot no matter what. I know of other students with similar qualifications who didn't get it.

#3. The prestige of your grad school matters in some circles but not in others. If there are particular companies that you want to work for, try to find out what their hiring practice is. Some companies place a high value on the school you graduated from, and some don't care at all.

It's been even better than I thought it'd be. I almost switched out of Computer Science in college because I was fed up with the boring classes, but I'm glad I didn't. Getting paid to program rocks!

What will prevent someone who knows about the deal from trying to get a job at Zappos with no intention of staying, grabbing the $1000 after a week, and leaving?

If you're talking about a one-person startup, you need to have some level of technical understanding. In order to turn your idea into a business, you need someone to implement the idea, and that's where the hacker(s) come in. A trusted technical person is your first choice. You can also try to hire contractors to implement for you, but without technical know-how, how will you be able to judge if they're any good?

I've been working for over 10 years, and I've found that most companies offer 2% - 5% raises, a little more if you are a super employee. The only ways to get more than a 10% raise are to change jobs or to use another job offer as a means to extract a counter offer from your current employer.