Uber’s All-Hands Meeting Got Derailed By A Sexist Joke

Uber’s litany of woe would, it seems, have come to a climax with the departure, however temporary, of founder and CEO Travis Kalanick. And, yet, just minutes after the company was informed Kalanick was out the door, somehow Uber managed to dig itself in deeper.

The company had an all-hands meeting to discuss its future in the wake of people leaving the company and repeated legal and publicity problems. At major companies, these calls almost always leak and almost always are heavily studied and analyzed by the media and by stock market experts. It is quite literally the last place that you would want to drop a “ladies be talkin'”-esque joke, especially when your company has been at the center of an enormous sexual harassment scandal that has seen multiple employees fired. And yet, at 6:40 in the audio, this happens:

It’s not quite clear who made the joke. The transcript claims it’s the director of Uber’s board, David Bonderman, and Arianna Huffington, leading the call, refers to the speaker as “David” in the audio, trying to downplay the joke. And, admittedly, in terms of the problems Uber’s facing, it’s a minor problem. But it illustrates that Uber, no matter how many investigations it has, has a long way to go to fix its culture.

(via Yahoo! Finance)