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.
