If I could give negative stars, for the first time ever I would - Biggest HR liars screwed over laid-off employees - Anonymous employee Upwork Employee Review

1.0
Jun 8, 2023
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

When I first started I loved this company, actually up until the day I along with 136 other FT employees and 70 something contractors were laid-off the day of the earnings call. Super nice move the CEO did to look good to the street. The people for the most part were amazing even though there was little organization in a lot of areas as the company was 'growing'. People worked together to keep the culture in a healthy place, w/l balance is highly encouraged.

Cons

Where do I begin? The day of the lay offs came and we all received a meeting invite 40 minutes prior to the announcement where the CEO very stone faced stated the cuts. Those who were cut got 10 minutes (which HR literally counted down for you) to hear the details/ask questions. OK sure, we've all sadly been here before but through the economic climate we expected Upwork to handle us a bit better with the way the CEO was talking in weekly ConnectUp meetings. Boy were we all wrong. We were sent and signed an agreement and the following week sent an amended agreement for half the agreed upon original severance amount and HR called everyone individually telling us that we needed to sign that day to save on taxes, it was the same as the original amount just different verbiage etc, straight LYING to us. A majority of us thankfully have experienced lay-offs before and/or have friends in the legal world who advised not to sign the amended agreement. Those that did lost half their little severance (not a great package either way in this climate---thanks CEO). I have NEVER seen a company treat laid-off employees so poorly. They should be ashamed of themselves, especially leadership and the HR team who made the phone calls. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, it frightens me that these individuals can look themselves in the mirror or sleep at night. I then learned managers were allowed to pick and choose who stayed and who went which added insult to injury, so performance did not matter which explained a lot of why my colleagues were laid-off and why others stayed. Do not listen to the 'selling points' that may be spun while looking into this organization like I and many of my colleagues did. We all regret what we thought we once loved.

Explore other reviews about Upwork

5.0
Feb 25, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great people, very approachable, interesting problems

Cons

A lot of short term thinking and near future optimization

1.0
Nov 7, 2025
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

It's remote, and most ICs are talented and kind.

Cons

Oh my, there are so many clowns at this company—nearly all of them in leadership. Mostly executive cronies from dinosaur companies like CareerBuilder and Yahoo, who are out of touch with the tech industry at large. This hysterical leadership shifts strategy every 3 months or so, resulting in whiplash for their poor staff as well as frequent layoffs and reorgs. In my time at this company, I’ve seen nearly every -ism you can imagine, frequently and repeatedly: racism, cronyism, sexism, and nepotism. The business model exploits freelancers, essentially offshoring work for clients (cheap global labor) while the company takes a hefty share via predatory fees, which are the majority of record company profits. Unfortunately, AI will cannibalize many freelancer jobs on the platform. Although the company is delusional in its own “native AI” progress—their models are unusable slop despite huge investments—other companies will likely provide useful tech in the near future, particularly agentic AI. I could go on, but the bottom line is that this is a grossly unethical company you should avoid if you can. I’ll also add that many of the positive reviews here are from USERS of Upwork, not EMPLOYEES. This results in a falsely positive, rosy view of a toxic company. I wish Glassdoor had a filter that could address this for people considering employment at Upwork. Their rating is likely closer to a 2.7 if those irrelevant reviews could be excluded from the data set.

10
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All