I don't think it's shenanigans. My step brother just started learning to code 2-3 months ago, 100% self taught through online tutorials. He is already a good Rails developer with several entry level job offers.

In my experience, no. I would recommend to almost anybody to just learn objc if you want to build a native iOS app.

As someone who just took the plunge and started my own company I have thought about this a lot lately. What we have started to do is go on temporary relocations as a team (there are only 3 of us), and do our work from different cities. Our home base is Chicago, but we just spent a week working in SF. Allows us to keep working longer hours and stay sane at the same time.