Upwork CEO Hayden Brown shared the following message with employees on May 7, 2026.
Team –
I have difficult news to share today: we will be executing a layoff that impacts approximately a quarter of our workforce. This was a tough call. I fully own it and want to share with you what we're doing and why we're doing it.
First: these actions are not taking place today. We will be notifying everyone next week about whether their role is impacted and will send an email to the company the morning the notifications begin. Tomorrow we’ll host an All Hands, and while we won’t have the answers to all your questions, it’s important we get together to hear them and connect as a community.
I want to explain why we are doing this.
The business is healthy, despite a choppy labor market backdrop and near-term volatility. We spent 2025 refounding Upwork, rebuilding our product, our customer focus, and our operations. Our growth strategies are working, positioning us for a strong future. However, external dynamics in Q1 indicate growth may be slower in the near term. We chose to take this step now for two reasons: (1) we know we move faster with smaller teams. Our 2024 layoff followed by excellent 2025 execution give us confidence this works. (2) To meet our profitability goals in a challenging environment.
Here is how we arrived at our decisions.
Our approach was to rethink the company from the bottom up, not incrementally change what exists. We scrutinized what it takes to run every function in this business with both people and technology. We are consolidating redundant work and collapsing workflows to reduce handoffs.
Two pizza teams are dead. AI means smaller, differently resourced teams in product and engineering can make a bigger impact than ever.
Fewer layers means faster decisions. Flatter is better, and our new structure will optimize for this.
We did not make decisions lightly, and decisions of this complexity are never perfect. Some things will break. But we're ready to fix those things, adjust our approach, and keep moving forward in the service of our customers and innovating for them at a rapid clip.
For those who will be leaving, I want to share my heartfelt gratitude for everything you've done to build Upwork to what it is. It's been a tremendous journey, and what we’ve done together is something to be proud of. Thank you. Your leadership team and I are committed to making this transition as smooth as possible.
For those who will be staying, I know this is a significant change for us. I look forward to getting together the week of May 18th to share more about our future plans.
Hayden
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