I don't think that a covid-related hiring spree should have affected a company like Confluent. Yeah there were probably many product companies that got more money due to Covid that wanted a managed Kafka solution, but Covid also took down other kind of companies who might have been Confluent's customers.
I think it has more to do with cheap money not being cheap anymore.
Money was never cheaper in the history of the US than during Covid... with 10% inflation and 0% interest rates, and a 10% deficit spending on stimulus.
Covid made it dirty cheap but money was cheap before as well, or at least cheaper than it is now [1]. Anyway what I meant was that Confluent is not the kind of company that hired more because it thought that Covid changes in business where going to last forever (a la Shopify or Meta).
I think it has more to do with cheap money not being cheap anymore.