If you subscribe to the idea that colleges/universities teaches how to think - and how to study, and not a (set of) subject, she has a BS+1 year of programming specialization.
If you look at Nordstrom's interviewing site (linked in the article), you see that they require people to have some technical background but also general communication skills. All the talk about "t-shaped" people boils down to the fact that in their line of work, understanding requirements (including non-technical descriptions given by a customer) is a non-negotiable requirement of the job, whereas purely technical excellence isn't as useful to them.
In that sense, having good communication skills and some programming experience, on top of being good at "getting stuff done" is better than what they'd get out of an average CS graduate. Put in other terms, current CS curricula don't serve these companies well, because they yield people who are deeply technical, but bring neither good communication skills nor necessarily familiarity with the tools used by them.
I guess that would be the gross salary. What would be the typical net salary for someone who earns that much in SF or Seattle after taxes and deductions (health insurance, ...)?
Employers usually provide health insurance at that pay level. Your take home in Seattle will be whatever you make minus federal and payroll taxes, so around 60%.
