how to learn German while working full-time?
Issue #140 (10 Mar) – 20+ jobs; Coffee with Cate; deli alternatives; hay fever app; investment package; a simple trick of asking for a no.
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Programming note #140: It’s time for another event with Berlin Events Weekly. We’ll meet this Thursday after work to eat some tacos, drink up to two margaritas and listen to some jazz.
Unfortunately, the taco place is small, so we needed to limit the number of tickets. We’d love you to only book if you can make it, tiger/tigress.
🌟 Handpicked community
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Meet — handpicked events:
Join us on March 13th to explore life sciences, business, and tech, connecting researchers, entrepreneurs, and investors driving biotech breakthroughs and health innovation. A must-attend for industry leaders!* | Thu, 13/03 17:00 | Venture Café CIC
🇩🇪 Futuretalk: Solarenergie als zentraler Baustein der Energiewende* (HandpickedXFutureTalk - 50% off) | Wed, 19/03 18:30 | BETTERTRUST
How tech is remixing the future of sound | Tue, 11/03 18:30 | ESMT Berlin
Networking event - Turks in tech Berlin - Open to all nationalities | Tue, 11/03 18:30 | The Castle Berlin Mitte
Women's day special: Gender equity: A catalyst for better tech products and fair AI innovation | Wed, 19/03 18:00 | Grammarly
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Keep the spirit of International Women’s Day alive by investing in your future. Personalized coaching for women who want more clarity, confidence, and success in their careers, businesses, and leadership. Learn more here.*
Hey everyone, I've been working on a project tackling the 720 billion minutes humanity spends daily on social platforms. I want to connect with entrepreneurs and changemakers to spark meaningful conversations. Let's talk!
For the geeks out there: Swapfest (on the 19th of April) is a place to buy, sell, and swap electronics, computer equipment, and tools.
📨 Submit your input for the community here. This section is also featured on LinkedIn in the weekly post.
👀 Handpicked jobs: Delivery Hero special*
Did you know that Delivery Hero's Tech Graduate Program offers full-time, permanent roles starting June 1st? This opportunity trains early-career engineers while providing excellent support. Perfect for recent graduates and coding bootcamp alumni (6 months of experience is enough). Multiple positions are open and accepting applications. Apply now to jump-start your tech career!
2️⃣ from the rotation this week: Delivery Hero
Backend Engineers (Tech Graduates) - Develop your Python, Java, or Golang skills while working on impactful projects across FinTech, Logistics, and more. Join 1,500+ engineers with dedicated mentors to guide your growth in a supportive, fast-paced environment.
iOS Engineers (Tech Graduates) - Build mobile experiences using Swift and Objective-C alongside industry experts. This program offers dedicated mentorship, real-world projects, and a supportive community to accelerate your iOS development career.
The remaining jobs with a focus on Marketing & Comms are in the Handpicked online database.
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💰 Salary Trends 2025 already has 613 responses
Have you already participated? You can also help to spread the word: check the suggestions here with links to some of my posts. Thanks to everyone who has helped already.❤️
☕️ Coffee Talk with Cate Lawrence
is where my guest contributes three links and I write a short bio. Permanent collection.
Cate is a journalist at Tech.eu and sure knows a lot about what is going on in the tech scene in Berlin and in Europe. She was the first journalist ever to cover our salary project, and I am grateful for that. Here is what she prepared for you:
The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family by Jesselyn Cook. If you’ve ever wondered how highly successful, educated, socially connected people fall for conspiracy theories, this book is essential reading. It's the book I recommended to the most people in 2024.
I’m a huge film buff, especially horror movies. Omeleto is a great YouTube channel for short films on loads of different topics.
Like most Australians, I love spicy food, so visiting the Berlin Chilli Fest is one of my favourite food festival events. Clearly, I have no restraint; last time, I bought 12 bottles of hot sauce.
🗞 Snippets
is a selection of links focused on Berlin/Germany, career, timeless content and business.
Berlin & Germany, career & timeless
We did another article with Michael for those who want to learn German. This time I asked, “How to learn German while working full-time?”. As always, he has some great tips.
This is the second Salary Trends participation call: data gathering is open until the end of March. Share with your friends, please.
DAX reached an all-time high! This is also because of Trump and a (long overdue!) massive shift in German politics, with CDU leader Friedrich Merz reversing his position on fiscal policy to support relaxing the debt brake in coalition talks with the SPD. The proposed package includes a €500B infrastructure fund and suspension of debt limits for military spending. But it’s only realistic in the current Bundestag, before the newly elected one convenes. Merz and Germany need Greens to support the vote. It’ll be very interesting two weeks. Once-in-a-generation opportunity for Germany. I hope for the best.
A list of 11 deli alternatives (🇩🇪, MV) to your regular Edekas, Rewes, Lidls and Aldis.
IBB released the housing market report for 2024 for Berlin, and I do envy all owners and everyone with “old contracts”, because the median rent in Berlin in 2024 was €15.74/sqm, an increase of 12.5% or €1.75/sqm vs 2023. The median rent in Berlin rose by €4.20/sqm in two years, which is more than in the previous eight years (2015-2022: +€3.04/sqm). Wild.
Whenever someone says that immigrants increase the crime rate, you can direct them to this research by ifo Institute, which clearly shows that this is not the case. But hey, the people saying that immigrants are criminals don’t really care, do they? Data doesn’t matter when you need to push your narrative. A fitting graphic that goes with it:
Source. 💎 Charité released (🇩🇪) an app that enables everyone suffering from hay fever to see which plants are currently blooming. Available on Android and iOS.
Career: A good discussion on career planning in a post-GPTO3 world. Regardless of what you think of AI tools, most of us will sooner or later be affected by them.
Career: We tried this several times in one of my previous jobs, and it does work: Ask for a no (or active disagreement) instead of a yes when looking for an approval or a review.
Career: For all the students of the gender pay gap, here is a paper explaining that the gap is shrinking mainly because younger men are losing career opportunities, not just women advancing. Older workers staying in top jobs create a "bottleneck" that disproportionately affects young men. Since the mid-1990s, the gap has narrowed only because older workers with large pay gaps are retiring. It’s sad, logical and probably one of the reasons for a lot of young, angry men.
Timeless: Maybe you find something inspiring in these 19 ways to improve your life.
Briefly
Bad news: Commercetools (Munich, -10%); Fluke (measurement tools, -80); McMackler (prop tech, -90); Deutsche Post/DHL (-8000); FreewayCamper (Munich, camper van rentals) insolvent; Mars discontinues Berliner fitness brand Foodspring six years after acquisition (WiWo)
Sad stats: Only 16% of Germans think that the USA are a reliable partner for Germany, the lowest ever measured in DeutschlandTrend.
Stats: Fiber optic coverage in Berlin reached 40.8% (884k households and businesses), up from 34% last year. All 2.2M households should be connected by 2028.
Yay! According to the IAB survey, Germany's job vacancies rose seasonally to 1.4 million in Q4 2024, the first increase since Q4 2022, though still 19% below Q4 2023 levels.
Strike season is in full swing: If you were one of the 65k+ affected passengers due to the strike on BER, make sure to check your rights. (🇩🇪) Employees of BSR are also continuing their sporadic strikes, so your trash cans might get fuller than usual. Deutsche Post came to an agreement with employees (+5% salary bump).
IDNow (Munich, identity check) was acquired by PE firm Corsair for $300M. Congrats to the founders!
Almost 1000 employees of Lilium (Munich, airtaxi) won’t get paid for January and February because Bundesagentur für Arbeit declined their second “Insolvenzgeld”. (BI & MM, 🇩🇪)
Zalando now owns 90% shares of About You. The remaining shareholders will be squeezed out.
Potsdam will bump the price of parking for residents from 30€ to 145€ annually on the 1st of July. The prices haven’t increased since 1993. (RBB) Something similar is planned in Berlin, currently the cheapest city in Germany.
VW presented a €20k EV, Every1. The catch: It’s only coming out in 2027.
Tesla’s sales in Germany in February dropped by 76%. EV sales increased by 30.8%. (RBB) Meanwhile, the number of registered cars dropped by 0.9% in Berlin (-11k).
Mercedes and BMW are considering the sale of FreeNow. (they hold around 50% of the company)
Weekly social
Reddit: Photos from Fidel Castro's US tour in 1959, during the brief time period when he was a celebrity in the US
Instagram: How often do you ignore red lights? (🇩🇪)
💸 Funded in Berlin & Germany
is a list of companies that received funding over €1M.
HelloBetter | Berlin | Digital mental health platform | €6M | Careers.
Koro | Berlin | Online food and snacks retailer | €5M | Careers.
Needle | Berlin | Enterprise AI database agents | $2.2M | Careers.
Alpine Eagle | Munich | ML counter-drone systems | €10.25M Seed | Careers.
Radical Dot | Munich | Chemical plastic recycling technology | €2.7M Pre-seed | Careers.
Ineratec | Karlsruhe | Sustainable e-fuel producer | €40M Debt + €30M Grant | Careers.
Conceptboard | Stuttgart | Collaborative workplace platform | €10M | Careers.
😅 Meanwhile with two memes this week
we had some sunny days
and somehow sad, but true
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