While I think it has gotten harder for non-CS degreed people to compete with CS-degreed people when viewed in terms of how hiring used to happen, due to limitations in ways to show experience, I think there are now many more ways to show equivalent experience other than a prior job in the same industry. A good Stack Overflow reputation and/or a Github account with some projects or contributions to known open source projects that have been accepted would go a long want in my book towards asserting someone could function as a programmer.