As a Gen-Z also recently graduated (less than 5 years), I can assure you, the fact these platforms are so big is because being graduated isn't worth anything these days. You are lucky or you are not.
That's not exactly true. It's not that an undergraduate degree is worthless, but it's become pretty standard. You may not stand above the rest with just a degree, but you certainly fall below the rest without one. I don't mean this from an intelligence or skill perspective, some of the smartest people I know don't have college degrees. But when the big companies are recruiting from college career fairs or listing it…
I’ve started to get the impression that even in software development there are certain domains or industries you would be hard pressed to get into without a degree, simply because majority of entry levels are done through campus recruitment.