did you ever ghost your recruiter?
Issue #152 (10 Jun) – tech & dev jobs; 3 years celebration; median Berlin salaries; working 996 - yay or nay; dating advice; attrition calculator.
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Programming note #152: I hope you had an amazing long weekend. I’d love you to join me and other subscribers to celebrate 3 years of Handpicked Berlin.
A big thanks to our sponsors, Feather and betahaus!
Email subject stats in snippet #9.
🌟 Handpicked community
is a place where we meet, share projects and ideas and look for help.
Meet — handpicked events:
Join me to celebrate 3 years of Handpicked Berlin together with betahaus. We will have some drinks and pizza at betahaus Moritzplatz | Thu, 19/06 18:00 | betahaus Moritzplatz
AI Breakfast: AGENTIC AI | Thu, 12/06 09:00 | Merantix AI Campus
WahlheYmat Talks - Foundations and Democracy | Wed, 18/06 17:30 | Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek PopUp
Makers' show & tell #20 | Tue, 17/06 19:00 | FabLab Neukölln
Berlin Print Festival 2025 | Thu, 26/06 15:00 | Baergarten
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Show cool stuff or Ask for something:
If you need an expert, check the Handpicked ones: (employee) relocation, employment lawyers, insurance and career coaches. Great people for great results.
📨 Submit your input for the community here. This section is also featured on LinkedIn in the weekly post.
👀 Handpicked jobs
is a rotating selection of jobs from companies I’d check out.
5️⃣ job highlights of the week
The remaining jobs are on the Handpicked job board. This week’s focus was Tech & Dev.
✨ Feather: All your insurance in one app
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Expat-friendly support: Need help? The Feather team is here to support you—in English, of course!
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☕️ Coffee Talk with Bela Wiertz
is where my guest contributes three links and I write a short bio. Permanent collection.
Bela (Twitter) is the founder of {Tech: Europe} and they are doing great stuff. I just attended one of their events (AI Fireside chat) and it was fantastic. They also have a newsletter and organise Hackathons regularly. Here is what he prepared for you:
Lamazère Brasserie — Amazing spot for special occasions. Very extensive selection of wines and amazing food. Usually a choice of 3 main courses and 3 starters - so a small menu, but actually always something for everyone.
Adolescence — In case you haven’t seen Adolescence yet — or haven’t even heard of it (somehow), even though everyone’s been talking about it — check it out. It’s an amazing mini-series on Netflix (4 episodes, about an hour each). I ended up watching the whole thing in one go.
YT Channel of Andreas Klinger — Andreas — Berlin-based ex-CTO of Product Hunt and (co-)initiator of the EU Inc. petition — has been getting more active on his YouTube channel lately. He’s been visiting some pretty wild moonshot startups, like Dunia in Berlin. Definitely worth checking out.
🗞 Snippets
is a selection of links focused on Berlin/Germany, career, timeless content and business.
Berlin & Germany, career & timeless
Looking to pimp up your CV? Check my GEN AI guide.
HR folks, founders & recruiters: I created this attrition calculator based on the Salary Trends report. Try it out and… let’s chat!
Lime bikes are very easy to… lend for free if you don’t mind the constant beeping. I saw it for the first time last week and wouldn’t be surprised to hear much more of the beeping in the coming weeks because Jungs will be Jungs. Related, Miles now apparently has smoke detectors in their cars. And a reminder: Nextbike will shrink the area of operations in July.
If you'd like to visit Rotes Rathaus (the seat of the Senate, our Berlin government), you can tour the mayor's office and senate chambers on June 21st (from 10.00 - 18.00) while also accessing mobile Bürgeramt services without appointments. All this on a Saturday? Yes!
Full-time employees in Berlin earned a median of €4,190 (gross) monthly in April 2024. The top 10% earn three times more per hour than the bottom 10% (€40.78 vs €13.18). About 40% of workers earn between €15-30 per hour, while one in five earns less than €15 per hour. Our tech bubble is doing significantly better with a median of €6,250 (Salary Trends data).
We had a rainy start to the summer, but this doesn’t mean you can’t plan some amazing bike trips around Berlin. Worth a bookmark.
Career: 996, or working 6 days a week from 9 - 9, is a recipe for success or burnout? Miriam from Sifted caused a stir on LinkedIn that turned into an article. My two cents: you really need to push, especially if you are a founder, but expecting the same from hired guns… demands a special type of hired guns that are hard to find.
Career: If you type a lot, check this article on making typing a regular exercise. Because I dropped the exercise years ago, I am far from the speed in the article, but I also decided to try getting into it. Being 2x-3x faster than today will be fun. I also recommend Keybr.
Career: State of ghosting in Germany: 37% of companies fail to follow up with candidates, while 25% of applicants also ghost recruiters. Most ghosting happens early: 44% of candidates disappear right after submitting their applications, often due to finding better opportunities, bad interview experiences, or unclear hiring process.
Timeless: If you are single and want to change it, here is some great material from Zvi (six posts in total). He is a machine on the length of his posts, but give him a chance. Similarly, the problem with dating apps by Tomas Pueyo.
Briefly
Bad news: Axel Springer -130 (in the holding).
Stats: German entrepreneurs reached their youngest average age ever in 2024 at 34.4 years, down from 37-38 years in the early 2000s. 39% of founders were aged 18-29, the highest share recorded. (KfW)
TechCrunch closed down its EU operations.
OpenAI is fighting a court order to preserve all ChatGPT user logs, including deleted chats and sensitive chats logged through its API business offering.
Delivery Hero settled with the European Commission and will pay a €223M fine for participation in a cartel with Glovo (fined €106M). Between July 2018 and 2022, they agreed not to poach each other's employees, exchanged commercially sensitive information and allocated geographic markets. DH has already provisioned €400M for the fine.
Getsafe (insurtech) is giving up its insurance license to focus on partnerships with other insurers as an intermediary.
Helsing (defence tech, Munich) acquired aircraft manufacturer Grob Aircraft to develop AI-powered air combat technologies.
Thyssenkrupp plans to spin off 49% of its defence unit TKMS (the submarine company).
Doctorly (Berlin, healthtech) was acquired by FREY ADV after withdrawing its insolvency application.
Tim Raue, a famous German chef, opened a restaurant in the TV tower (German/Berlin food). Mains are between €28 and €36.
Weekly social
Reddit: East Berlin in the late 1980s.
Instagram: Correct pronunciation of Rudow is Rudo. Plus others.
Tired of working alone, distracted, and uninspired? Join betahaus for deep focus, spontaneous chats by the coffee machine, member events that spark ideas, and 24/7 access to 3 beautiful Berlin spaces. Work feels better here. Handpicked readers get 20% off. ❤️
💸 Funded in Berlin & Germany
is a list of companies that received funding over €1M.
Baobab | Berlin | Cyber insurance for businesses | $13.7M Series A | Careers.
Banxware | Berlin | SME lending middleware platform | €10M | Careers.
Flank | Berlin | AI legal agent | $10M | No careers.
Lendorse | Berlin | Student financing platform | €1.75M | Careers.
fulfillmenttools | Cologne | Distributed order management systems | $17M | Careers.
Lumoview | Cologne | Building data digitization platform | €3M | Careers.
Scalable Capital | Munich | Digital investment platform | €155M | Careers.
Holidu | Munich | Vacation rental platform | €46M | Careers.
SpAItial | Munich/London | 3D AI environment technology | $13M | Careers.
Vegdog | Munich | Vegan dog food | €9M | Careers.
Manex AI | Munich | Autonomous factory technology | $9M Seed | Careers.
Atmen | Munich | Green hydrogen certification platform | €5M | Careers.
😅 Meanwhile
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