Horrible experience all around - Enterprise Account Manager Upwork Employee Review

1.0
Jun 16, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Some of the people are really great.

Cons

Got hired late 2022 under the pretense that 80% of Enterprise AM's had hit quota in 2021 and 90% were on track to hit quota for 2022. Total BS. People were hitting their revenue targets because they lucked into how many accounts they got and the size of the accounts, and maybe 1-2 reps were hitting non-revenue goals a month. The product is not an enterprise product and customers did not view Upwork as an essential part of their hiring strategy, they viewed it as a nice to have when they need short-term work for a project. We touted to all our customers that Upwork is great so help prevent overhiring and layoffs, yet that's exactly what Upwork did, more than once. They were never able to give us full books which set us up for total failure. As some of us were finally starting to get new, promising accounts, we get a last minute meeting put on our calendars and we immediately knew what was about to go down. Pretty much every AM/AE that was hired since September got let go, along with many others who had been there for longer (some more than 3-4 years). Then there was all the drama with severance getting cut in half that is mentioned in a ton of other reviews. You would think with Upwork being a literal work marketplace, they would have a little more empathy in this scenario. So much for their mission statement.

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