Big corporations are hiring programmers with no comp sci degree and only a month of training to write Rails apps? Really??
Boy, did I waste 10 years of my life.
I know a couple of guys who got into I.T. with just a high school diploma. However, those people went through a lot more than 10 years of life's hard knocks before they got there.
Yup. I know a lot of people with physics, maths and engineering degrees hired as programmers.
Big-corps: almost none.
Contractors/System Integrators who "body shop" for Big-corps: a lot more.