Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer

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Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer

Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer

@topdevfreelance

Freelance millionaire • Freelancing since 2021 Top Rated Plus @Upwork • Software architect Freelance tips, personal finance, AI

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Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer
Only Google and Nvidia outperformed S&P 500. If you invested in any other Mag 7 you underperformed. That's why I invest in index funds.
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Nicola Amadio
Nicola Amadio@nic_amadio·
Here’s why Switzerland has INSTITUTIONAL SUPERIORITY over Poland, and why it matters 🇨🇭👇 Yesterday I mentioned how each time I go from Zurich to Warsaw I perceive a clear upgrade in vibes and energy. Today I’ll share why I haven’t moved to Poland despite this. 1. If you need to get anything done in Switzerland, you’ll get it done without surprises. It might not be the fastest thing. It might not be the cheapest. But it’ll get done well, eventually. Let’s take setting up and managing a business as an example: taxes are convenient and mostly fairly simple. They’re not Dubai-low, but in most cases they’re also not much higher. Moreover: they don’t change. Things, rules and laws are very stable. This means that you can find most info online, or by calling public administration support, and you won’t need to pay lawyers to explain things to you. In Poland, there are tens of possible exemptions you need to check and apply for if you want an efficient setup. Moreover, these laws change literally all the time, meaning you need to spend mental cycles to keep up with them. Also, most stuff is in Polish. In general, you’ll need a lawyer (100–200€/hour) to help you understand the situation, changes, and act accordingly. Moreover, it’s still the EU: ~20% local VAT if you sell there or do B2C services while based there, vs non-EU Switzerland with (usually) no B2C VAT when selling services abroad (“export of services”) and just 8.1% to Swiss customers (only after 100k CHF sold in CH). 2. Social spending sustainability Poland is growing, but also running big (6%+ of GDP) deficits each year because of huge military and pension spending. Compare that with ~0% deficit in Switzerland, and you see which system is more sustainable. 3. Not everything is private (healthcare & education) You can get private healthcare and schools in Poland, at OK/high quality. But: • private schools aren’t cheap • private healthcare only gets you so far (for some things, you’ll still rely on public hospitals) In Switzerland, both are effectively universal and high quality. Healthcare isn’t “free” (you pay 200–700 CHF/month per person), but it works and it’s top-tier. 4. Nature and infrastructure Top-tier in Switzerland. OK in Poland. 5. Long-term outlook My girlfriend and I are currently fairly young and have no kids. That’s why we have more fun in Warsaw than in Zurich. Later on, when having a family, life in Switzerland might become more appealing than in Warsaw. Apartment close to nature (mountain / lake / river), taking kids or dog for walks in nearby forests, regular visits to nearby farms, etc. 6. Subjective perspectives If you’re nerdy (want to be at the epicenter of AI and robotics), into sports, and/or like Western European “hipster” vibes, you might enjoy Zurich even in your 20s. If you have a local job, you’ll likely like the money. If instead you want to limit the number of German-looking people with New Balances riding bikes, you don’t want to go out with McKinsey consultants or tech workers talking about savings rates and promotions, you want a city that’s vibrant after 10 PM, you prefer good-looking, feminine, supportive girls over masculine, mid-looking ones wanting to be "50-50 on everything"... Then you’ll likely enjoy your 20s and early 30s more in Warsaw than in Zurich. My perspective/conclusion: Zurich for: • saving money from salary • setting up shop • joining the social security system • long-term family life Warsaw for: • life (especially weekends) in your 20s / early 30s • remote freelancing base • lifestyle hub in Europe • keeping an eye on the fastest-growing European economy In the end, they’re both great, in their own ways 🇨🇭🇵🇱
Nicola Amadio@nic_amadio

Back in Warsaw since a few days and the VIBES SUPERIORITY to Zurich is obvious. Warsaw is COOL. Vibrant, young, creative, growing, chill, (relatively) affordable. Zurich is OLD. Nerdy, boring, corporate, stiff, extremely expensive, stressed out, somewhat stagnant. — I’m happy to have set up my business in Switzerland and to have a foot there in these volatile times. But I’m not sure that long term I see myself as someone living somewhere because of “taxes and stability”. Obviously there’s more to life than that.

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Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer
Freelancing comes with a cost. Burnout. - Positive review pressure - Constant overdelivering - Unstable income - 24/7 availability That's why top freelancers move to running businesses, social media and investing. Including me.
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Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer
Venezuela situation. That's why I think you should always keep some BTC in self custody. Especially if you are not in the first world country. You never know.
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Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer
I am not invested in any freelance platform. Why? It doubles my risk. Same as if I would buy the shares of the company I work for. Diversify.
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Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer
Tech crisis is coming. That was my thought while I was freelancing hard. And the fear from it made me start investing. Now, I'm so grateful that I've reached FI, especially because of AI threatening tech jobs. The fear can be a great motivator.
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The Wandering Investor
The Wandering Investor@wander_investor·
Potential client reaches out wanting complex structures to avoid taxes while remaining a tax resident of France because “life is good here”. Mentions large investments in “risk-free stablecoins yielding 10%-14%” We reply that we cannot help him, but that we can offer unsolicited advice: there isn’t any risk-free yield at 10–14%. Potential client then replies cursing at us and calling us dumb.
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JOYJIT SEN
JOYJIT SEN@jitsen4785·
@topdevfreelance Emotion drives most real estate decisions; math drives real wealth.
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Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer
Real estate is not a good investment. It is so hard to sink in my brain. I'm wired to think that's the go to investment. But when I do the numbers: Long term it underperforms the stock market. Not to mention - repairs, tenants, idle time. Just do the numbers.
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Abhishek Gawade
Abhishek Gawade@abhishekgawade_·
@topdevfreelance 100% — they’re massively overpriced. And once you invest, you’re locked into a single location. Most houses today offer the same basic facilities anyway.
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Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer
A guy working online solo on his laptop casually buys $1M of Google stock. It makes a small % of his portfolio. That's the world we live in right now. If I would start working remotely today this would be highly motivating. It still is.
@levelsio@levelsio

So I bought over $1M in Google today Kinda crazy but also not so crazy I've been the biggest Google hater for years, it was completely mismanaged, destroyed by politics and lack of any leadership, fumbled inventing Transformers etc. Then Sergey returned and suddenly Google is dominating not just in the AI benchmarks and leaderboards but in real usage AI benchmarks can and are easily rigged But me running an AI startup and always wanting to use the best models makes me conclude something basic now: it's really just Google and Elon Musk and the Chinese in the end who will probably win The models I use are all by either Google, xAI, or the Chinese (ByteDance, Kling, Minimax) As you know Google now has its own chips (TPUs), Google has the biggest data set in video (YouTube), images (Google images) and generally the web (for LLMs), still the one of the biggest general user bases (Google Search etc), and they finally have a real engineer being the de facto CEO now (Sergey Brin) Elon Musk with xAI you can't bet against cause he simply has the sheer willpower to get things done The Chinese are similar, sheer willpower and they don't sleep and they really want to win, and companies like ByteDance (TikTok) have massive data sets in video too of course In my opinion everyone is still staring too much at LLMs, I've always been more interested in image models, video models and now the nascent 3d and world models, that's where it's going and where we'll be able to prompt entire worlds or apps or whatever, it's hard to imagine WHAT exactly With my app Photo AI I try be a little part of that journey there of course Now I can't invest in xAI, I'm a bit invested in the Chinese via the ICHN ETF, but of course Google anyone can invest in and so I think I should I've reduced my Nvidia investments already months ago, as it was inevitable there'd be real competitors to their chips at some point, with Google's TPUs there are now I'm not an expert, and you should mostly just buy ETFs, and you shouldn't listen to me and this is not financial advice

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@levelsio
@levelsio@levelsio·
So I bought over $1M in Google today Kinda crazy but also not so crazy I've been the biggest Google hater for years, it was completely mismanaged, destroyed by politics and lack of any leadership, fumbled inventing Transformers etc. Then Sergey returned and suddenly Google is dominating not just in the AI benchmarks and leaderboards but in real usage AI benchmarks can and are easily rigged But me running an AI startup and always wanting to use the best models makes me conclude something basic now: it's really just Google and Elon Musk and the Chinese in the end who will probably win The models I use are all by either Google, xAI, or the Chinese (ByteDance, Kling, Minimax) As you know Google now has its own chips (TPUs), Google has the biggest data set in video (YouTube), images (Google images) and generally the web (for LLMs), still the one of the biggest general user bases (Google Search etc), and they finally have a real engineer being the de facto CEO now (Sergey Brin) Elon Musk with xAI you can't bet against cause he simply has the sheer willpower to get things done The Chinese are similar, sheer willpower and they don't sleep and they really want to win, and companies like ByteDance (TikTok) have massive data sets in video too of course In my opinion everyone is still staring too much at LLMs, I've always been more interested in image models, video models and now the nascent 3d and world models, that's where it's going and where we'll be able to prompt entire worlds or apps or whatever, it's hard to imagine WHAT exactly With my app Photo AI I try be a little part of that journey there of course Now I can't invest in xAI, I'm a bit invested in the Chinese via the ICHN ETF, but of course Google anyone can invest in and so I think I should I've reduced my Nvidia investments already months ago, as it was inevitable there'd be real competitors to their chips at some point, with Google's TPUs there are now I'm not an expert, and you should mostly just buy ETFs, and you shouldn't listen to me and this is not financial advice
@levelsio tweet media@levelsio tweet media@levelsio tweet media
@levelsio@levelsio

This is Sergey Brin's yacht He got so bored of sitting on this $450M yacht that he had to get out and go create things again The only true long-term satisfaction for man is to create, either things, or babies

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Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer
The biggest secret in investment banking: S&P500 outperforms 95% of active traders or funds. 5% odds is not the game I'm playing. No charts, day trading, speculation. Earn salary -> Buy low cost ETF 100% long term win ratio.
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Ole Lehmann
Ole Lehmann@itsolelehmann·
I'm researching our next city to live in Europe, here are my criteria: - (mostly) walkable (also with a baby stroller..) - good level of english - over 500k people (I lived in berlin -> then small 40k village in cyprus-> I need the city again, at least nearby) - nature in and around the city - major airport - good startup ecosystem - good english level - (mostly) sunny climate - tax system that doesn't destroy you Right now this is the list I have with these criteria - Madrid 🇪🇸 - Lisbon 🇵🇹 - Barcelona 🇪🇸 I lived in Cyprus the last year and people speak amazing english here, so that's def a big plus for a country that has that Cyprus is nice in many ways, but just way too small and village-like for me If I don't care that much about the weather (still not sure about this), there are these options: - Amsterdam🇳🇱 - Berlin 🇩🇪(love hate relationship, lived there 11 years, want to be sure before I come back) - Munich 🇩🇪 (I like that its so close to mountains, Italy etc) Switzerland is also nice but I think it's a bit too polished and structured for my liking. Might come there later in life ;). I still have a small small voice in my head that tells me to check out the US more. My main problem is that it's SO FAR away from my family. What we'll do next year is to say 2 months in a couple of cities/places and then decide Might also come 2 months to the US just to get a better picture, it's possible that I won't like it as a place to live. I also have accepted the fact, that there is NO perfect place to begin with. There's always up and downsides.
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Alex TopDev | $400K Top 1% Upwork freelancer
This is my philosophy too. My main source of income is freelancing. If it dries up or I don't want it anymore, I'd be fine from ETFs, stocks, real estate income. Then you move on and do something else or you do nothing and enjoy the retirement.
@levelsio@levelsio

One of the main things I learnt from the fall of the Spanish and Portuguese empires is that they both never re-invested their wealth They instead built gold plated palaces (see the one in Mafra full of Brazilian gold) and other types opulence And they thought the colonies would remain forever so they were fully dependent on the wealth from there (sugar, gold, silver, coffee) But once they became independent, they lost a large share of their GDP overnight, Portugal lost about 80% of their income after Brazil went independent in 1822! If they would instead have re-invested the wealth, they could have developed industry and new businesses but they became resource dependent instead One interesting thing about the relatively young states of UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia is that they do exactly that. UAE and Qatar heavily invest their oil money to become destinations to live and Saudi Arabia is one of the top investors in tech startups worldwide On a personal level I also learnt from this to do the same, don't waste the money you made on assets that don't return (like cars, boats, general opulence) Instead try to re-invest most of it so you get income from new sources so that if the income sources that made you the wealth (for me my startups) eventually dry up (almost guaranteed in business, see the business or "product life cycle") you have already switched to the new industry I personally do that through ETFs, stocks, real estate and a little bit of startup investing So yes don't be like the Spanish or Portuguese empire 👌

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Anthony James
Anthony James@AnthonyCJames·
Upwork's new User Agreement is effective on January 5, 2026! Had Grok compare. Pay attention Freelancers: User Content and AI Tools (Section 2.4): This is a brand-new addition. It allows Upwork to use User Content (including job posts, proposals, communications, work product, and reviews) to train generative AI models for personalizing your experience (e.g., improving suggestions or tools). Key detail: Unless you opt out via the site settings, you grant Upwork an irrevocable, perpetual, royalty-free license to use content you send/receive on the platform for AI purposes (consistent with your preferences and the Privacy Policy). This includes Work Product you own under a Service Contract.
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