Not good if you are looking for a sales job - Sales Upwork Employee Review

1.0
16 Aug 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The benefits were extremely helpful and were a reason why I (and others) stayed for so long. Work from home Wednesdays and free food were a plus.

Cons

If you were on the sales side, then you most likely did not have a life. A typical day at Upwork was working 45-50 hours a week, eating lunch at your desk, dealing with multiple "cliques" at work, unprofessional management and not being able to take PTO because of unrealistic expectations from higher-ups. A lot of external hiring led to hardly any career opportunities for the sales teams. The management lacked the tools needed to support their teams. Favoritism was big at Upwork. If you didn't go to the happy hours or interacted with the team, you were seen as "not part of the culture". Within Large Accounts, Mid Market and BDRs, hardly anyone has hit their quota within the last 6 months (or even throughout 2019). Don't just take my word for it, do your research on Linkedin and see how high the turnover has been within their sales department this year.

Explore other reviews about Upwork

5.0
25 Feb 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
7 Nov 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
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