Upwork reviews

3.8

60% would recommend to a friend

(630 total reviews)
avatar

Hayden Brown

57% approve of CEO

44% positive business outlook

Upwork has an employee rating of 3.8 out of 5 stars, based on 630 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Upwork employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Informationstechnologie industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

630 reviews
1.0
Jan 14, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Work at home Wednesday was a useful perk. Free food was particularly helpful at the Mountain View location since it's quite a drive to any restaurants (unless you wanted to eat at the Symantec cafe)

Cons

While it was still oDesk the company was great but nothing seemed to work after the merger. The politics between the former-oDeskers and former-Elancers really slowed everything down to a crawl (or even backwards).

2.0
Sep 24, 2024

Run far and fast

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Unlimited PTO and ability to work from home

Cons

If I’m not demoralized enough daily by the company’s inability to listen to its customers and deliver on its mission, my supervisor will step in with public critique despite rush deadlines and changing processes. Leadership blames everyone but themselves for revenue shortcomings, which leads to lots of finger pointing and a workforce that is so scared of layoffs they need to point out each other’s shortcomings and step over each other. The company continually prioritizes short term gain rather than a healthy platform, hiring people who have never heard or used Upwork to improve it without listening to customers who use it. The salary I received was great at first, but I haven’t had a raise since. Promotions are rare, a supervisor told me “just do the job you were hired to do. There’s no room for growth for you here”

1.0
Jun 8, 2023
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.

Viewing 22 - 24 of 630 Reviews

Glassdoor has 914 Upwork reviews submitted anonymously by Upwork employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Upwork is right for you.