My experiences have been similar. Very happy with the talent and confident that I could get good people there at any time. At the same time, I'm quite ambivalen

My experiences have been similar. Very happy with the talent and confident that I could get good people there at any time. At the same time, I'm quite ambivalent about their UX (the invoice issue you mention is really bad) and the fees. I feel it's prime for disruption. The platform has a lot of features, including complex ones in the area of payments. But I think a challenger should be able to build something with fewer resources and take, say, ~7% instead of 15%. Being an old incumbent, Upwork probably carry a lot of cruft around. Of course building a marketplace is very hard (dual marketing problem, etc.) but I don't think it'd be that hard to build a new one. As a buyer at least I'm not that locked in, I have also tried other platforms (ex: a European one called Malt) with great success, and I often shop around between platforms if I can.