Business Strategy & Consulting

Upwork: A Freelancer’s Descent into Kafkaesque Absurdity

The gig economy. A promised land of flexibility, autonomy, and unlimited potential. Or so the marketing spiel goes. But what happens when the platforms designed to empower freelancers become instruments of arbitrary control, shrouded in vague policies and enforced by unyielding algorithms? This isn’t a hypothetical scenario. This is my reality on Upwork. And it’s a reality built on a foundation of fear, fueled by inconsistent enforcement, and ultimately designed to keep freelancers in a perpetual state of precarity.