3rd happiest city in the world is...
Issue #107 (24 Jun) – 20+ dev & tech jobs; podcast appearance #2; Coffee with Julia; Happy City Index; solar career pivot; a perfect CV; kindest person in the room; Berlin Club Piste map.
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Programming note: My second podcast appearance went live - you can watch it on YouTube or listen to it on Spotify. Luardo and Benny from the Guten Tag podcast did some reels, and I had a chance to experience how it feels when an Instagram reel reaches 60k+ views. I now understand the dopamine fix so many look for.
We finished our packed June event schedule with Urban Challenger (check the reel) - it’s definitely something to try for your next team event.
🌟 Handpicked community
📨 Submit your input here. Inspiration for all the categories on the link.
🎪 Meet — tech & other events:
Berlin Climate Meetup - Summer picnic | Thu, 4.7 at 18.30 | Volkspark Friedrichshain
nocodeklub w/Jonas Ley from FINN Auto | Thu, 4.7 at 18.30 | SIBB
E-Sport Business Meetup | Mon, 15.7 at 10.00 | Hotel Berlin
😎 Show — Cool stuff / Shoutouts / Projects & similar:
Creative Writing Workshop for Women, Saturday, 29th of June. “We will reflect on accepting yourself and explore the rebel within you with the help of prompts in a supportive group. We welcome all women (cis, trans, non-binary).” One free ticket for Handpicked readers on a first-come, first-serve basis. Don’t book if you won’t come.
🎶 Living room concerts are moving to a bar. This Thursday. Use HANDPICKED for 10% off.
🔍 Ask — for a Service / Co-founder / Project help & similar:
“We want to solve the shortage of qualified technicians for manufacturing companies worldwide. Are you our CxO for this journey?”
If anyone knows which museum in Berlin holds Akhenaten artefacts, do let Allanah know.
Looking for the submission link? It’s below the title ⤴️
👀 Handpicked jobs
5️⃣ from the rotation this week: Tech & Dev
The remaining jobs (also outside rotation) are in the Handpicked online database.
❓ Do you have questions on anything Berlin/non-Berlin/Germany/career-related?
Just send it over (reply to the email or igor @ handpickedberlin.com). Let’s see how we can help.
🗞 Top inspiration snippets
☕️ Coffee with Julia Schneider
Julia is the author of a Substack From Julia’s Desk where she writes about events related to film, culture and politics in and around Berlin. She is also the biggest fan of Eastern Europe (and Poland 🇵🇱) I had a chance to meet. This is what she prepared for you:
The Making of Modern Ukraine (podcast) - Recorded live in a classroom at Yale University in Autumn 2022, this podcast lecture held by Timothy Snyder (Historian of Eastern Europe) explores Ukrainian history and its relationship to other entities on the territory and around. Snyder explains the nation-building process, covering, for example, Kyivan Rus, the Ottoman Empire, the Soviet Union and the Maidan Revolution.
GREEN BORDER (movie trailer) - The latest work by three-time Oscar nominee Agnieszka Holland explores how we can unexpectedly find ourselves in liminal situations, forced to choose between good and evil. The narration interweaves three perspectives: a Syrian family, Polish activists, and border guards. The movie is based on real events in the green zone between Poland and Belarus.
Kulturzug Berlin-Wrocław (train trip) - No plans for next weekend? How about booking a trip with the „Kulturzug“ to Wrocław? It’s not just a train but an intercultural experience. A team of moderators provides a cultural program on board, featuring concerts, language classes, and more. This weekend service connects people to Wrocław, a colourful, beautiful and vibrant city 350km from Berlin.
🇩🇪 Berlin & other good stuff
🎙️ You can count the number of times I used “right” in my second podcast appearance - available on YouTube or Spotify. I enjoyed the conversation and hope you can also take something out of it.
🤮 Some landlords in Berlin started to use furnished & temporary accommodation tricks (for 19,44€/sqm on average!) around the rent cap — the amount of these increased by 185% between 2021 and 2022. The worst affected areas are Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, Mitte, Pankow and Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. (RBB, 🇩🇪) Related, residential property prices in Germany fell again in the first quarter of 2024 by an average of 5.7% from January to March compared to the same period last year:
😊 Berlin ranked 3rd in the 2024 Happy City Index, just after Aarhus and Zurich in the 2024 Happy City Index. They rank in categories Citizens, Governance, Environment, Economy, and Mobility. I am not 100% buying into the methodology. The next German city is Munich at no. 10.
Hear me out. If you are thinking of a career pivot, how about this… forget software, AI, oil, or nuclear; go full into deep-tech solar. I loved this article on hardware innovation in heavy industry due to solar energy getting cheaper and better, and I believe Casey is right. I also found this chart putting forecasters to shame again:
All the heavy investment will accelerate technological progress (e.g. TDK claims their new battery already has 100x capacity). At the same time, “World faces ‘staggering’ oil glut by end of the decade, International Energy Agency warns”. (FT) Forecast, but still… Phew! Seems like deep-tech solar is the place to be.
Career: While applying for a job in a solar-related company, you can use some tips from this article on How to write a perfect CV. “Tailor your résumé for every application by making the relevant tweaks and highlighting different areas. Otherwise you are like the bore who tells the same story to every person he meets. Not everyone—and not every recruiter—is interested in the same things.”
Career: Lovely piece of advice for your office behaviour: do not be the smartest in the room; try to be the kindest! I’ve worked with some people with a “war” mentality, and it’s draining. ”Just a few people are going to miss the smartest in the room, but everyone is going to miss someone kind.”
Timeless: Gilbert Arenas (a former NBA player) is a bit of a questionable character, but his insights on what it takes to be good at something really stuck with me. “The way to get better is simply to master the basics long after others would have lost interest.” Life hacks usually don’t work.
Reddit choice of the week is a rant/discussion on the positives and negatives of living in Neukölln. It’s a big area, so it depends on what parts of it you look at, but I am no fan of Hermannplatz myself after once almost losing an eye!
💬 Briefly:
😔 Bad news: as announced in March, Gravis closed all 38 stores. Mersor (Berlin, personalised accessories) bankrupt; Mayd (Berlin, medicine delivery) bankrupt; Emma (Frankfurt, mattresses) -18%.
Stats: The KfW Startup Monitor 2024 reports a slight 3% increase in German startups (Existenzgründungen) to 568,000 in 2023, with full-time ventures declining 8% but part-time startups growing 11%. Female entrepreneurship rose to 44% of all new businesses.
Trade Republic had challenges in processing dividends due to migration from HSBC, so they needed to deal with a lot of complaints. Related, 2 Bored Guys did a deeper dive into their “PR protest” in January (🇩🇪), which we also covered at that time. Cringe.
Two co-CEOs of Berlin-based Seller X (Amazon aggregator) are departing. According to Sifted, they are at least $14M better off.
Amazon isn’t done investing in standort Deutschland. On top of €8.8B for cloud infrastructure, they’ll invest an additional €1.2B in logistics, robotics and HQs. This got them a meeting with Olaf Scholz.
Rheinmetall made their biggest deal in history; Bundeswehr will spend €8.5B on ammunition and tanks.
German Amazon Prime members will no longer be paying delivery fees to Lieferando. Related, “analysis by the Financial Times and theDelivery.World, an industry analyst, found that the four firms’ (Deliveroo, Delivery Hero, DoorDash and Just Eat) combined losses since 2017 are $20.3bn.” (The Economist)
AI got another all-star company: Ilya Sutskever (ex-OpenAI) founded Safe Superintelligence. No career page yet.
We finish off with a new Biergarten (Neulich) at Tempelhof. Bring a hat and sun screen.
💸 Recently funded in Berlin & Germany
SLAY | Berlin | Social gaming company | $5M Seed | Careers.
Forward Earth | Berlin | Automated collection of environmental and employee data | €3.2M Seed | Careers.
Lillian Care | Berlin | Health facilities for employed doctors | €1.5M | Careers.
eco.mio | Berlin | Reduces CO2 emissions from business travel | €1M+ Seed | Careers.
atmio | Hamburg | Technology for detecting, fixing, and reporting methane emissions | €5.1M Seed | Careers.
StoryBox | Munich | AI-based video creation platform for corporate communication | €5.5M Series A | Careers.
Isar Aerospace | Munich | Cost-effective launch vehicles for small satellites | (update) Series C extended to $65M | Careers.
😅 Meanwhile
St. Vandel made a map of Berlin clubs; go to r/berlinsocialclub if you want to read the discussion
✌️ Handpicked essentials and a treat:
- How to learn German and get over “Genau” and “mit Karte, bitte”?
- Signing a new employment contract in Germany? Read this before.
- Don’t make these mistakes with your side hustle!
- Berlin Salary Trends Reports: How do you compare?
- ❓Surprise treat for the curious
- The best questions to ask at a job interview
- Write it down now! Or why you should journal at work?
- What do hiring managers look for in CVs?
- Sponsor Handpicked?
- Story of Handpicked Berlin in a podcast
✨ Berlin Events Weekly: the best resource for events in Berlin ✨
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