Although I rarely, if ever click on the logo in gmail, I do believe in the "logo should be a link to the root" convention. Surely that's just UI design 101, right?
The twitter one you mentioned in the article drives me super crazy as well.
The thing that amuses me is it took me a while to find the equivalent of the keyboard shortcut "gh" (go home). I think I finally found if you expand the gmail logo and click gmail under that, it does what I wanted.
I am deeply grateful for the fact that they have not messed with the keyboard shortcuts yet.
I haven't been in a similar situation, but from my experience jumping jobs quite a few times in the tech space, degrees don't matter as much as experience.
If you've been at the company for a long while like it sounds and you know what would be good for the company as far as product development goes, I'd say moving into a role where you can actually optimize those processes is a great position for you to be in! Good luck in your new role..