are you changing your job in the next year?
Issue #122 (14 Oct) – 20+ jobs with Data & Finance focus plus a special; pavement patterns; a 15-minute city; Schrödinger's Deutsche Bahn, more on salary negotiations and... more trains!
Make sure to never miss another issue. Subscribe:
Programming note: I am finishing this in Tokyo, and so far, recommended; they for sure do trains and toilets better than us. But for now, no Handpicked Tokyo in sight. I will also take a short break, so the next issue will be in your inboxes on the 4th of November! Speak soon!
🌟 Handpicked community
is a place where we meet, share projects and ideas and look for help.
📨 Submit your input here.
🎪 Meet — tech & other events:
UX research knowledge sharing | R9. Berlin meetup #4 | Wed, 16/10 at 18:30 | Engelnest Co-working
People & Culture Breakfast | October Edition | Wed, 23/10 at 8.30 | BIA
Ad Filtering Dev Summit 2024 | Thu, 24/10 at 09:00 | eye/o*
😎 Show — Cool stuff / Shoutouts / Projects & similar:
(Inspiration: pop-ups, shoutouts for someone from the community who helped you, giveaways. Websites, apps, projects you've built. Tenders, project/ideas/startup funding sources.)
🏠 "Your apartment caught my interest"
This line won't get you far in your flat search. This new service will help you out: Get The Flat is your personal butler, sending tailored flat viewing requests for you, all day, every day.*
🔍 Ask — for a Service / Co-founder / Project help & similar:
(Inspiration: looking for co-founders, project partners or freelancers; search for tech & non-tech related service. Support for your hobby projects, ideas, and groups.)
“I have two major Berlin product and fintech meetups, and would like to revamp them. Looking for a partner to help with logistics (sponsors, venues). Just for fun and fame, no profit yet. Can you help? Or suggest someone?”
Looking for the submission link? It’s below the title ⤴️
This section is also featured on LinkedIn in the weekly post.
👀 Handpicked jobs
is a rotating selection of around 20 jobs from companies I’d check out.
🚨 Guess what. I talked to Kittl, one of the best Berlin companies you probably don’t know about. They compete with Canva and Adobe, and to do that, your tech needs to be amazing. That’s why half of their employees are engineers. Product-market fit is there: you’ll be working on the most challenging problems for millions of their users. They are looking for a top Senior Full Stack Engineer. It’s still early, so get on board! Apply yourself or tell a friend. It’s a top company: here are their other jobs.*
5️⃣ from the rotation this week: Data, Analytics & Finance
The remaining jobs (also outside rotation) are in the Handpicked online database.
You can also submit a job. Next time, the focus will be on Tech & Dev jobs.
*Sponsored
📢 Certified further training in International Online Marketing – boost your career now!
Looking for a way to stand out in Berlin’s competitive job market? Our 10-week International Online Marketing Manager course is your answer! It’s an interactive live online course, fully in English.
Stay ahead with up-to-date content, including insights into AI and cutting-edge marketing strategies. If you’re registered as unemployed in Germany, you could qualify for full funding with a “Bildungsgutschein”.
Gain the skills companies are looking for and take your career to the next level!
🗞 Top inspiration snippets
🇩🇪 Berlin & other good stuff
is a selection of links focused on Berlin/Germany, career, timeless content and business.
It turns out the readership of this newsletter is strongly in favour of Wor-from-Home. If you were in charge, almost 60% of you would go for the “hybrid, whatever you want to” model. 15% would go for fully remote, and 23% with three days in the office. Return-to-office only had a couple of votes at 2%. (n=311)
Did you know Berlin has a distinctive pavement pattern? I noticed it but never really thought of its origin. Now, we can read about it in this article in The Berliner, based on a book about Berlin's urban design (link in the article).
Amazing fact about Berlin: it’s almost entirely a 15-minute city, which is an “urban planning concept in which most daily necessities and services, such as work, shopping, education, healthcare, and leisure can be easily reached by a 15-minute walk, bike ride, or public transit ride from any point in the city”. (Wikipedia) Someone commented, “in other words: there's a Späti nearby.”
According to TÜV, almost a quarter of buses in Germany have technical defects, with 14.1% failing the main inspection and 10.5% with minor issues, primarily faulty lighting and oil leaks. In 2023, 6,200+ bus passengers were injured in Germany, also because of poor use of seatbelts. Still, buses are a very safe method of transport, according to TÜV. (Tagesspiegel, 🇩🇪) Do you use a seat belt?
Ryanair does have a bit of a beef with Germany and Lufthansa. In August, they announced a decrease in the number of Berlin connections by 20% (7); in addition, they announced that they are cutting Dortmund, Dresden, and Leipzig. Hamburg is also getting hit big with -60%. Total seats will drop by 12% (-1.8M or 22 connections). (Ryanair press release is, of course, presenting them in a good light, 🇩🇪)
Career: Elliot Hill will take over at Nike, and his Linkedin profile did the rounds a couple of weeks ago. He started as an intern at Nike in 1988 and will now become the CEO. Old school and cool (or not so cool?)
Career: A few issues ago, I published an essay about salary negotiation. This is another article that the author, Patrik McKenzie, recommended. It is in a similar direction but extremely actionable.
Timeless: Last week, South Korean author Han Kang won the ‘24 Nobel Prize in literature. If you are reading non-fiction, you should check this high-quality list from the TrueLit subreddit. Ideal for the upcoming gift season.
Timeless: A fun CO2 calculator to make you feel better or worse, depending on how you look at it.
📱 Weekly Social.
Reddit: Why are most instant delivery guys south-east asian?
Reddit: on the techniques and reasons behind the waxing of apples.
💬 Briefly.
😔 Bad news: Solaris will lay off 1/3 of 700 employees, especially from their Electronic Money Institution business (HB, 🇩🇪) — they still plan for profitability in 2024; the German government forecasts a second consecutive recession year in 2024, with GDP expected to shrink 0.2%, following a 0.3% contraction in 2023 - only the second time in post-war Germany. (FAZ, 🇩🇪) Ok, things can only get better.
Stats: Berlin's population grew by 0.2% (7,946 people) in H1 2024, reaching 3,886,000 residents. The growth rate in H1 2023 was 0.4%. (St. BB, 🇩🇪)
Gropyus (housing-tech?), a Vienna-based company with a strong tech presence in Berlin, raised €100M. You can check their careers.
After Paris, Madrid also banned e-scooter rentals, giving Lime, Dott (and Tier) until Oct 25 to remove them due to parking and circulation issues.
More trains! Flixtrain expanded its cooperation with regional train operators and added 200 cities to their combo tickets for long-distance and local travel. (HB, 🇩🇪) In practice, this means you can reach more destinations directly with Flix tickets.
Tesla produced the 400,000th car in Grünheide 2.5y after the production started.
Personio, the second most valuable German startup after Celonis, is pushing its IPO into “maybe” 2026. (HB, 🇩🇪)
To address the upcoming shortages, Berlin plans to gradually raise the retirement age for civil servants from 65 to 67, starting in 2026. 40k employees are set to retire by 2030. (berlin.de, 🇩🇪) Not sure what their union will say.
💸 Recently funded in Berlin & Germany
is a list of companies that received funding over €1M.
Purpose Green | Berlin | Energy consulting and renovations | $15M Seed | Careers.
Mietz | Berlin | Digital rental process platform | €1M+ | Careers.
Nelly | Berlin | Factoring for medical practices | €100M | Careers.
forward earth | Berlin | AI-based environmental management solutions | €4.5M Seed (another Seed after June) | Careers.
CODE | Berlin | Applied sciences university | €1.2M Growth | Careers.
Phantasma Labs | Berlin | AI production planning software | €1M+ | Careers.
Building Radar | Munich | Construction sales workflow automation | $7.2M | Careers.
Voltfang | Aachen | Green battery storage provider | €8M Series A | Careers.
😅 Meanwhile
in the meeting culture.
✌️ Handpicked essentials and a treat:
- How to find a great company to work for?
- How to learn German and get over “Genau” and “mit Karte, bitte”?
- Football in Berlin: all the links you will ever need
- Berlin Salary Trends Reports: How do you compare?
- ❓Surprise treat for the curious
- The best questions to ask at a job interview
- What do hiring managers look for in CVs?
✨ Berlin Events Weekly: the best resource for events in Berlin ✨
♡ 20% Berlin: all the Berlin news twice a week, in English! ♡
Read it? Hit that ♡ button.