Getting the first one can be tricky. After dropping out of college, I spent a couple years kicking around in clerical temp jobs before I was able to find a small company to give me my first "real" programming job. Of course, by that point, I'd been programming for a dozen or so years as a hobbyist (I was introduced to programming when I was 8 and immediately loved it), which is almost certainly the main reason they were willing to give me a chance.

After getting a year and a half professional experience at that first company, it's not been that difficult. And now, 20 years later, I'm working as a Perl programmer/sysadmin at a university. I still don't have a degree.