Well, I'd give the company at the 'worst' of it an F. I mean, in the end, they could have done even worse, but advertently or otherwise the company as a whole somehow decided to be hostile to the userbase. While nearly everyone involved in the 'worst' of it left or moved on, I still think that while individuals are important, the company as a whole and its policy makes or breaks things.
Now, I'd give it a solid B. Rather than going over the negatives (which I'm sure at this point the relevant employees at the company are slightly sick of getting nagged over, and to an extent relies on company policy and resources), it’s probably worth considering the positives.
We have an actual community management team again, with, from what I can tell, a steady growth in numbers from quarter to quarter. They're good folks and while from what I can tell, very busy (but it’s better than the old "we don't really need a community management team, lets keep cutting it down" of the past). They're fairly communicative, though to an extent there's a lot of finding their feet with working with the broader community. They do listen to the concerns of the community - and where possible there's been quite a few positive changes. There's room for improvement IMO, but that seems heavily filtered through resources rather than individuals. I've also seen no real obvious meddling as we did in the past.
Their interactions with/through the moderator spaces has been excellent though.
We haven't had any real incidents of, frankly boneheaded adversarial behaviour, though to an extent, we also don't have the same level of very direct interaction we used to have. The focus for the community team feels like building a solid back end, and to an extent supporting collectives over the very hands on style of the past. I do realise SE of the early days was smaller, but that's something I'd love to see again.
Featurewise, it’s a mixed bag. From my (admittedly biased) perspective - while not perfect, we are getting development on the main sites, but sometimes it feels a bit 'too' slanted towards supporting the paid products (which is fine—other than a certain lack of focus). We got a left sidebar for teams, which then moved out to its own site.
We've had some interaction with staff across the network - not counting the 'formal' initiatives like the communitython, including on meta. Sometimes they even argue (this is fine!). This is a marked improvement from the old claims of staff being unwilling to engage with the community and while there's a lot of room for improvement is a good thing.
I am contemplating participating on the SE network again, at least asking questions.
As someone who stuck around through the worst of it, and admittedly at least due to spite, I'd say give it a shot. To paraphrase a certain former clean up guru... "If it does not give you joy, let it go" - but it’s worth seeing if it gives you joy.
While I do realise that the former management caused folks pain - and that's changed, I feel like a critical thing past 'do I want to support these folks?' is 'do I find value here?' And that's something you need to answer for yourself.
