AP Photo/Richard Drew
- Partying at Uber‘s headquarters in San Francisco started at 5:30 a.m. on May 10, the day the company launched its initial public offering (IPO), The Washington Post‘s Faiz Siddiqui reported.
- San Francisco employees reportedly started drinking in the office during the morning and continued throughout the afternoon.
- The festivities in San Francisco led one employee to resign after what The Post described as "a verbal outburst and dispute with colleagues" and forced the company to stop another employee from driving home.
- A party at a satellite office in California was shut down, according to The Post.
- Uber did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Partying at Uber’s headquarters in San Francisco started at 5:30 a.m. on May 10, the day the company launched its initial public offering (IPO), The Washington Post‘s Faiz Siddiqui reported.
San Francisco employees reportedly started drinking in the office during the morning and continued throughout the afternoon, spraying champagne and consuming liquor that had been stored in their desks since Travis Kalanick, one of the company’s co-founders, was CEO. (Kalanick was replaced by Dara Khosrowshahi in 2017.)
The festivities in San Francisco led one employee to resign after what The Post described as "a verbal outburst and dispute with colleagues" and forced the company to stop another employee from driving home, according to The Post. A party at a satellite office in California was reportedly shut down.
Uber did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
The Post’s report of Uber’s IPO-day celebrations recalls the boisterous and aggressive culture during Kalanick’s tenure described by employees who said the company had created a hostile, overly-competitive environment that was particularly harmful toward women.
Concerns about Uber’s workplace culture contributed to Kalanick’s departure and the hiring of Khosrowshahi, who has emphasized cultural change during his tenure. He outlined this goal in a 2017 LinkedIn post, in which he wrote, "We do the right thing. Period."
Before Khosrowshahi took over, Uber hired former US Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate the company’s culture, and in a 13-page report, Holder’s recommendations included banning alcohol consumption during work hours and "de-emphasizing alcohol as a component of work events." Uber’s board of directors agreed to implement all of Holder’s recommendations.
Uber’s share price fell 6.7% on its first day of trading, though it recovered to a level near its starting price of $42 when markets opened on Friday.
Read The Washington Post’s full story here.
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Source: Business Insider – mmatousek@businessinsider.com (Mark Matousek)