Little background: I'm a Ukrainian dude, working as a freelance web designer on Upwork. My wife is Russian, we used to live in Kiev, but 1 year ago we moved to Russia cause of personal reasons. So here I was working with a nice Indian guy from US, building their website of a cool tech they have. Then the bombs on Ukraine dropped and everyone started saction Russia.
I have family in Ukraine, which I'm supporting all this time after I moved to Russia, and since everything was sanctioned to oblivion, Upwork was the only source for me to keep supporting my family in Kiev. Then Upwork imposed sacntions of their own kind: they just blocked all accounts associated with Russia or Belarus. And it's kinda hard for new freelancers to build their account from the start to make decent money.
The CEO wrote a very heartwarming letter about this:
We are heartbroken and horrified by the invasion of Ukraine. Upwork is concurrently working on measures—both immediate and rolling out soon—to further support Ukrainian freelancers and the Ukrainian community, including:
A $1 million donation to Direct Relief International in support of the Ukrainian population.
Product enhancements to make it easier for Ukrainian freelancers to preserve the careers they have worked so hard to establish, whether or not they are currently able to work.
Programs to make it easier for clients to maintain their existing relationships with and provide financial assistance to talent in Ukraine.
A $100,000 matching program for donations from our own team members to aid in humanitarian relief in Ukraine.
“Oh, that's cool,” I said to myself and then wrote to up work support, explaining my situation and got a response: “We are really sorry, please relocate to continue working on our platform and paying us 30% commissions”.
How the fuck am I suppose to relocate if I'm basically a refugee now? Kind of Tom Hanks from Terminal movie situation. I wrote: “Dear miss/sir. How can I relocate if there's been a war going in my country? I'm physically unable to relocate from Russia because of all the sanctions. But even if I could fly the fuck away on a refugee plane to Europe? Then what? Without money I'm just another poor sod sucking pennies from working folks pockets. At least here I can continue supporting people who are stuck in a siege and volunteering to help people who lost their homes beyond retrieval”
I got a response: “I feel you my man, I wish I could do something (you could unblock my account?) but there is nothing I can do until you relocate. Take care, stay safe”
I thought I was talking to a robot, so I send an appeal to change my region on upwork, since it's not a technical limitation, but manually imposed. I attached my ukrainian passport, ukrainian taxes bill, ukraininan utility bill that I pay for the apartment where I registered, I send screenshot of invoices where I'm sending money to my relatives. This is what I got in response:
After careful consideration, we’re sorry to report that your request to have your Upwork account reinstated has been denied. We were unable to successfully verify your location and your account will remain permanently suspended. You won’t be allowed to open additional accounts.
Please note that it is unlikely that we will respond to any future correspondence regarding this matter. However, in the event that you relocate to an approved location, feel free to resubmit your request.
We wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.
Best Regards.
Basically, AI generated “FUCK OFF”, copy pasted by a human employee.
So yeah, here's the whole story. The moral of it all is to not fill sorry for me (I'll be alright, I'm gonna bounce back and find a way to support my relatives) and not to open your eyes on corporate bullshit (most of you guys here seen way more hardcore shit than this).
This is my single drop of rage that I needed to share into a huge fire that burns in this subreddit. I feel very pissed about all this hypocrisy that is coming from corpos, how they “care” and how they are “heartbroken”, doing everything that are in their power. Then you take a loupe and see what's really going on.
From that perspective, the world is a bordello and we are the used condoms in it.