Again, I'm not going to comment on recent events, but I will say that you're accepting lots of what you've read at face value. Some people say the culture is X and others are denying that and saying the culture is Y. Both have an interest in trying to tell what they believe is the truth (both are susceptible to confirmation bias and a whole slew of other human biases), both also have personal agendas.

An honest inquiry into what things are like anywhere would involve actively taking in a balance of viewpoints through sampling that tries to avoid sampling bias and correct for agendas.

Anecdotally, my personal experience does not at all represent what I've seen reported in the media throughout the entire time I've worked here. Then again, I'm only relying on my own personal experience. It's anecdata and should be treated with skepticism. Based on my past experience at more than a half dozen different jobs, this workplace is better in many ways. It's also worse in some ways.

That said, I and everyone else (inside the company and outside the company) suffer from sampling bias. I'm only relying on my personal experience and if I care about the truth it would be wrong to accept that as a conclusion. It would be wrong to represent to you that my experience is representative for the whole company, because I don't have enough information. I haven't worked on all teams with all managers and all peers.

Since I accept that I suffer from sampling bias, I've started to reach out to colleagues from under-represented groups to ask them in which they believe our culture and workplace is better, equal to and worse than other places that they've worked. I want to understand how we can protect and reinforce those aspects that are better, how we can improve those that are equal and how we can turn around those that are worse and make them into aspects that are better.

My anecdotal experience is that many of my colleagues are trying to do the same to differing degrees. One thing most of us have in common is that we're generally all people who want to do our best and when we discover ways in which we've been coming up short, we we apply ourselves to try and make it better. We've always done that and we're doing this now with all our current challenges as we have with all other challenges we've encountered in the past.

Assuming a degree of truth that likely falls anywhere along the spectrum between position X and position Y stated above, which would be a more positive outcome from current events?

An institution that has created a lot of value in the world in terms of making transportation cheaper, better and more accessible to more and more people every day:

(a) crashes and burns taking down not only itself, but also damaging economic prospects in technology and Silicon Valley for years?

(b) reforms aspects of itself that are undesirable, turning those aspects into strengths and setting a positive example of how to reform oneself for other institutions that also exhibit the same undesirable traits.

Personally, I always choose B in any scenario because B leverages existing value to address problems (it's always easier to fix things when you have resources to work with). Option A is just a path to destruction of anything of value with no guarantee that what follows next is better in any way.