UP-Work
upworkn March 2017, Upwork reported 14 million users in 180 countries with $1 billion USD in annual freelancer billings.[18][19]
In 2020, the company purged 1.8 million freelancers, possibly due to changes made under the leadership of new CEO Hayden Brown.[20][21] In a 2019 call with investors, Brown said that Upwork would be focusing more on serving the needs of Fortune 500 companies rather than smaller companies just looking for a quick job with a single gig worker. During this call, Brown also spoke of a “skill gap” between what companies were looking for on the Upwork platform and what they were getting. Many of the freelancers purged were rated as “less skilled” or had lower rankings on the platform
