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Goodbye Upwork

I am now officially out of Upwork as my account have been suspended, and permanently. I received an email from their support stating the following:

Hi Zakaria,
 
We have reviewed your information as part of the identity verification process.
 
Unfortunately, your account has been permanently suspended as we are not able to verify your identity.

If you have active contracts with a client or pending funds, those are being canceled as you may no longer use Upwork.

While we regret having to take this step, we could not verify the required information. We are not able to reverse this decision.
 
Please know we are unlikely to respond to further correspondence regarding this matter. We wish you well in your future endeavors.
 

Regards,

This is an automated message which does not state the real reasons why my account have been suspended.

As you may know, building a reputation in the freelance world is not easy, it requires lot of hard work and dedication. and seeing all of that abruptly fall apart is not a nice feeling, especially if you have done nothing wrong. Since I joined the platform 8 years ago, I worked my way up, starting from the ground up, working on small and large projects, working on the whole process of software delivery, from backend to front end, passing by DevOps, working on building projects from the scratch and also on evolving existing ones. I learned a lot I have to say. In past few years, I acquired the privilege of top rated freelancer, which is a kind of promotion that makes you eligible to being proposed to clients by Upwork folks, and also to receive offers by the Upwork people themseleves. My score was 33 jobs, and 2157 hours of work.

Upwork

On the other hand, I feel no regrets refusing to comply with their idendtity verification process, because it got way beyond the limit of privacy. It also gives you the feeling that you are already a suspect, a scammer who needs to prove his innocence, and not an innocent that needs to prove that he is not a scammer. Upwork have made the decision to start bullying its users, and I don’t want to be part of that.

What happened ?

The thing about Upwork is that you have to go through an identity verification process, randomly from time to time. The idea in itself is brillant because it guarantees that the platform safety from scams and dishonest practices. However, the way the verificiation is conducted is the issue here. Here is a brief timeline of the events that lead to the suspension of my account:

The Upwork agent asked me first to show him my ID through the camera, which I did. He then asked me to share my whole screen, which I was reluctant to. I shared with him the browser window only instead. He then asked me to show him my task bar (I think he meant the Dock where there are programs icons) which I refused because simply my task bar contains all the things and programs I am running. Something that I did want to share.

Why did I refuse to continue the verification process:

I refused to continue the verification process and terminated the call because the treatment was poor. The agent conducting the interview was probably doing a great deal of verifications, and started treating human beings on the other end of the wire like robots. No greetings, no small introductions outlining the process. As soon as he joined the video meeting, he started giving me orders. Some Upwork folks know that you are in a weak position, and that you have no choice but to comply, so they take advantage of the situation to abuse the freelancers. Sadist people exist everywhere. In addition, the Upwork agent is not allowed to turn on his camera during the verification, while the freelancers are required to. Imagine talking to a stranger with a “fake name” (yeah they don’t use their real name), who asks you to share your screen, to show your face, and to do different things on your personal computer.

The new vs. the old identity verification

It’s also worth knowing that the identity verification process evolved throughout the last years to become awkward and more privacy violating. I have done a couple of identity verifications successfully with Upwork before. The video verification was a short exchange with an Upwork agent in which he asks you a couple of questions about your profile and also about the jobs you are working on. No screen sharing, no privacy violation, no headaches.

The new verification process requires you to share your screen through a Google meet session.

Who knows what freelancers will get in the next years?

My overall impressions about Upwork:

In my opinion, Upwork’s golden era was during the pandemic, between 2019 and 2021. The platform was vibrant with projects and I have never run out of interesting projects during these times. Before the pandemic, it was kind of difficult to land a project even as a well rated and experienced freelancer.

In 2022, a conflict occured between Russia and Ukraine, and Upwork decided to stop its operations in Russia and Belarus. This situation was also accompanied with a global economic uncertainity. From my perspective, this had an immediate and noticeable impact on the platform. I immediately noticed that there was something going on with the platform. There were less projects, and less job invites, and therefore less chances for your proposal to win. Less cash was flowing. The global economic sitation impacted also the freelancer rates and projects prices. Clients are more and more asking for lower rates, or more work. From the month of April until September 2022, I was not able to find any intersting project, which was something I have not experienced in the last three years or so.

On the overall, working in Upwork can be good for learning and also building a career from the ground up for software engineers and developpers. One has to accept to be underpaid, but at the same time, you have more freedom in comparison with working as a regular employee in a company.

The end of an era

The suspension of my Upwork account marks the end of an era in my career. Since I joined in 2014, I knew periods where I worked exculsively on Upwork because I chosed to the freelance path. I am not sure If I will try an another freelance platform in the near future, but what I know for sure, is that it’s time to a take a break.

My message to freelancers using or willing to use Upwork

Upwork is certainly still one of the best platforms for freelancers around the world. However, they are changing their identity verification policies, as the years go by, to become more intrusive and humiliating. Who knows what they will make freelancers do in few years. Their dispute resolution is also questionable, and favors almost all the time the clients. For a starter software engineer or developers, Upwork can give you a good career boost. If you have a good Upwork profile, it can even help you land jobs elsewhere (It happend to me before). You should also know that Upwork may suspend your account abuptly even if you are hard working and have done nothing wrong. They just don’t care. For this reason, one has to diversify and not rely fully on Upwork. As old saying says: don’t put your eggs in one basket.