High - Profile Project Work: 'Upwork' Global Platform (The Hungarian Case)

Abstract

In 2003, a Silicon Valley development project sought to employ a developer that the project team believed was best suited for the project but who was located in Athens. The remote work, however, raised a number of concerns since the developer in Athens didn’t plan to relocate to Silicon Valley for the project. The solution they arrived at allowed the developer to remain in Athens and work remotely using an online platform called oDesk, which was aimed at addressing concerns of remote work, such as visibility, efficiency, and trust. Since the platform proved successful, they thought that the digital tool could benefit other firms and individuals looking for greater flexibility and innovative ways of working. Five years earlier - in 1998 - another company called Elance was founded by an MIT graduate and a veteran of Wall Street. They created a marketplace for small businesses, and in 2013 Elance and oDesk were merged. Two years later the combined firm was rebranded to Upwork, which is now the world’s largest freelancing website. The platform aims at “creating economic and social value on a global scale by providing a trusted online workplace to connect, collaborate, and succeed” (Upwork.com, 2018, in: Clausen – Khashabi – Kretschner – Seifried, 2018:5). The structure of this case study is a follow: i) we present the general features of the Upwork platform, ii) outline the key characteristics of the globalized service model, iii) review the views of Upworkers by the key dimensions of platform work (i.e., motivation, work content and skills, working conditions and formation of voices, and iv) focus on the issues raised during the interviews with platform workers. The final section summarizes the key lessons learned from the case study.