Still counts as a bubble. The bulk of the tech hiring done during that period wasn't just to meet the increased pandemic demand but rather based on lofty corporate projections saying that the demand was here to stay. But then a couple years later the exponential growth didn't continue, didn't slow down, didn't even stabilize – it completely reversed back to pre-pandemic levels. And then all those companies found themselves with significantly higher payroll costs than they could afford.
Not every company is Google or Microsoft. You have to remember that the vast majority of the ones that had layoffs, including $100B+ "unicorns", have never made a single dollar of profit in their entire existence.
If there weren't protests, then we would still be locked down. Government loves lockdown. It is wrong to refer to it as pre-pandemic as opposed to pre-lockdown. But you probably are still wearing a mask in your car when driving by yourself.
