Elon, Buy Upwork, Make Remote Work Great Again!

“It was the 24th of October

That day 21% of Upwork employees always remember, yes they will

'Cause that was the day that they lost their jobs”

The news about one-out-of-five layoffs at Upwork shook the remote work community to the core.

The exact scope of the layoff is unclear, but based on Upwork’s reported 800 employees at the end of 2023, the 21% cut will likely hit at least 160 workers.

Was it necessary? Could it have been avoided?

Upwork expects to save $60 million a year from the announced cost cuts.

The stock markets reacted almost immediately, in a matter of hours.

The gig-economy specialist's share price was up 22.6% as of 11 a.m. ET.

When you put it like this, you don’t get the full picture:

So, How Many People Work at Upwork?

I asked this question on Reddit. My source was Backlinko:

The trouble with getting the exact number is related to freelancers who work on Upwork for Upwork.

I had to ask one more question.

WTF is GSV?!

Indeed, an interesting market reaction, and an even more interesting graph:

I didn’t have to wait long for an answer:

OK. I get it. Moving on.

How Upwork Feels About All These Job Kills?

I don’t know about you, but Upwork’s sense of humor on X, a day before the layoffs announcement was really something.

I didn’t get it then, and I don’t get it now. So, I decided to fix it for them:

As you might’ve expected, the official Upwork Community reacted, as well.

I had to fact-check this Upwork Community member, my fellow freelancer. This is what I found:

“The estimated Net Worth of Hayden Brown is at least  $24.1 Million dollars as of 18 August 2024. Ms. Brown owns over 58,046 units of Upwork Inc stock worth over $11,243,016 and over the last 6 years she sold UPWK stock worth over $1,348,852. In addition, she makes $11,530,900 as President, Chief Executive Officer, and Director at Upwork Inc.”

A “decent salary” and “a drop in the ocean.” Nuff said. Now, to our space-cowboy friend.

Dear Elon Musk, Let’s Make Upwork Your Next Takeover Task!

From a space explorer to our planet’s savior. People don’t lack imagination in their propositions to Elon Musk to save this or that by buying all kinds of things and companies. I saw one tweet from a guy asking Elon to buy the umbrella company, which owns all dating apps, and save the dating market. I mean, of all the suggestions this one perfectly aligns with Elon’s plans to tackle the declining population problem. But, let’s get back to Upwork.

I thought to tweet my suggestion. Elon, buy Upwork, and make remote work great again. But, he already had other plans:

So, X is now a job search platform, officially. This is one of the latest new features. The app that does everything. Hmm, where did I see that? Let’s ask Wikipedia:

“WeChat has been described as China's "app for everything" and a super-app because of its wide range of functions.[10] WeChat provides text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, video conferencing, video games, mobile payment, sharing of photographs and videos and location sharing.”

Shortly before buying Twitter, Musk wrote: “Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app.”

The everything app, indeed. And, Elon Musk is doing everything to elect the next President of the United States.

So, it seems that Upwork will have to wait because it’s definitely not on Elon Musk’s plate.