#202: is your rent above €25/sqm?

🎾 of course I also started to play padel. And again got a confirmation that my biggest strength was never sports, average at best.

#201: AI surveillance in Berlin?

🤘🏻🤘🏻last week I found my love for music again after visiting Metallica concert. I didn't expect to have goosebumps THAT much.

#200: social media ban for kids?

#199: should we build on Tempelhof?

🏃🏻‍♂️ I hope you had a great long weekend. I started my preparation for a marathon, so my summer will consist of a lot of running.

#198: would you move to Brandenburg?

😱 last week I experienced a horror scenario. I was co-organising a webinar about 2026 Salary Trends together with Ravio, and my internet suddenly stopped working

#197: what's your pension situation?

🪵 things are progressing nicely: now the newsletters are so big that it’s very hard not to offend or at least annoy someone with each issue.

#196: will you start skipping restaurants?

🧢 It’s hard to believe, but the first Handpicked Berlin issue was sent almost exactly 4 years ago

Salary Trends 2026 results are here

Ok, most of it. 🎉

#195: does Berlin have a trash problem?

👞 I am going to take the next week off to burn some tokens, so this is the last Monday issue before May 4th.

#194: are you German or autistic?

🥸 I’ve received a couple of messages about the subject line drawing the interest, but then being buried in the newsletter and people struggling to find it.

#193: what's the median salary in Germany?

I started to work on Salary trends analysis and am happy to report that the data has quite a good quality and that we collected over 4,500 responses.

#192: does the Görli fence make sense?

🧶 Without checking the data quality at all, the Salary Trends 2026 will be a major upgrade over 2025. By last Friday, we had 4000+ submissions...

#191: how to bring rents down?

🚀 I am taking a short break, but it wasn’t a properly planned vacation, so I still need to work. But this is fine, because I love my job.

#190: what's this demo about?

🏓 I was just thinking how crazy 2026 has been so far in almost every sense...

#189: why is the Smiley Portal gone?

Salary Trends had a good first week, and I’d be happy if you could share it with your friends/WhatsApp group or your team (nothing better than a good Slack channel post, HR is gonna love you!)

how much do you make?

Issue #188 (2 Mar) - a restaurant & three movies rec; BVG strike no. 2; 12 distractions you can set aside; what's your excuse?

announcing Handpicked Careers

Issue #187 (23 Feb) - new Money Talk; population drop; BAD1; Berlinale winners; on bland AI writing.

will AI replace all of us?

Issue #186 (16 Feb) - Maglev train; anti BER lobby; German novels; making a living as an artist; is infinite scroll doomed in the EU?

should part-time work be reformed?

Issue #185 (9 Feb) - Berlinale is back; winter chaos; Berlin Werbefrei; Telekom speeds; signs of low intelligence.

would you work in defence tech?

Issue #184 (Feb 2) - new email layout; Money Talk is back; secret to being happy and why layoffs don't work!

did you see the northern lights?

who wants free potatoes?

Guten Morgen,

how did 2026 start for you?

Happy New Year, but only if it’s still appropriate to write it on the 12th,

will you be paying the Solitude Tax? (Berlin in 2035)

This newsletter issue is from the future, Berlin in December 2035. It’s just a fun experiment with the same structure as the existing newsletter. If you have 3 minutes, please help me improve the product by answering a couple of questions.

and the most single Kiez is?

Programming note #179: This is the last regular newsletter of the year.