how hard is making a career pivot?
Issue #127 (02 Dec) – 20+ jobs in Business and Strategy; eye contact in Berlin; Coffee with Anna; empty flats in Neukölln; toxic cosmetics; Practical Betterments; no companies funded in Berlin?
Programming note: After helping me pass 2,000 followers on LinkedIn, you also helped me to complete the second of the milestones set a while back: 100 genuine testimonials. You can read all 105 of them on the website; you just need to slide 100x. Thank you so much!
The only thing left for 2025 is to reach 10,000 subscribers and work towards moving things from the backlog.
🌟 Handpicked community
is a place where we meet, share projects and ideas and look for help.
📨 Submit your input here.
🎪 Meet — tech & other events:
🤖 Join Grammarly’s prompt engineering meetup this Thursday to learn how they’ve tackled novel challenges and created tools and workflows that help them leverage state-of-the-art LLM capabilities, iterate quickly, and ensure quality throughout the process. | Thu, 5/12 at 18.30 | Grammarly Hub*
GenAI for Product & Design Teams | Tue, 3/12 at 9.30 | Merantix
ProductLab Community: Building Al Products @ GetYourGuide | Thu, 05/12 18:30 | Get Your Guide
this could be your event - advertise it for 50-150 clicks
😎 Show — Cool stuff / Shoutouts / Projects & similar:
🏠 "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.*🎙️ Live podcast alert by the Women Authors of Achievement Podcast! Daria will host Marsano co-founder Annett Kuhlmann discussing her path from photography to floristry. All genders are welcome. Tickets come with a bunch of freebies. (Thu, 12/12 at 18.30)*
🔍 Ask — for a Service / Co-founder / Project help & similar:
A friend is looking for micro-influencers on TikTok and Instagram. Up to 5,000 followers, with a Berlin focus. Approach me, please.
Looking for the submission link? It’s below the title ⤴️
This section is also featured on LinkedIn in the weekly post.
*Sponsored
👀 Handpicked jobs
is a rotating selection of around 20 jobs from companies I’d check out.
5️⃣ from the rotation this week: Business & Strategy
The remaining jobs (also outside rotation) are in the Handpicked online database.
You can also submit a job. No joke, but someone is looking for a Ghost Buster!
📍 Does anyone of you do Google reviews?
I made this modest business profile, and I’d appreciate it if you could drop me a Google review. I think it would be lame if the first review would be my own.
Or even lamer if I’d go and buy some. 🤮
🗞 Top inspiration snippets
☕️ Coffee with Anna Mezhova
is where my guest contributes three links and an explanation while I write a short bio.
Anna is one of the subscribers I met at one of our events, and she is one of the best deal hunters I know. Points, cashback, personal finance, money making more money (interest deals), whatever you want. She also started a newsletter, Smart Living, dedicated exactly to this. Check it out and subscribe. Here is what she prepared for you:
I'm a frequent user of Berlin public libraries (VÖBB) – they have lots in English! Since their website's UX leaves much to be desired, I use the Libby app for my e-book and audiobook loans. You can link your library card to access VÖBB's catalog, then read borrowed books on your Kindle or within Libby itself. It's free with your €10/year public library membership!
I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi. Despite a slightly (okay, very) cringe-worthy name, this is a very useful and accessible personal finance book. It inspired me to keep a budget spreadsheet, taught me not to be afraid of credit cards, and got me into stock market investing. Think of it as a Personal Finance 101 crash course.
David Perell's Hugging the X-Axis essay argues that Western culture overvalues novelty at the expense of commitment, making us miss out on building deep expertise, nurturing old friendships and committing to a relationship (hello, Berlin dating scene!). As someone who country-hopped for years before finding joy in calling Berlin home, this piece really struck a chord.
🇩🇪 Berlin & other good stuff
is a selection of links focused on Berlin/Germany, career, timeless content and business.
I wrote an article on eye contact in Berlin/Germany to settle on the most important questions once and for all. Feel free to share it around. I also published one of the last “How do recruiters read your CV” interviews, this time with Matt.
Demand and supply for drugs in Berlin is so strong that dealers offer instant delivery services on business cards. But if there is a phone number, why don’t the police just call it and arrest them? In short: 1) There are legal limits on police sting operations, and 2) Arresting individual dealers is ineffective as they're quickly replaced while the larger network continues operating. Despite significant enforcement efforts (520 investigations into "cocaine taxis" this year), supply and demand remain stable. More at RBB (🇩🇪).
Numbers check: Of roughly 75,000 residence registrations in October and November, only about 5,500 (less than 10%) were done online. My guess is that people don’t know it’s possible or cannot do it because they, like myself, have no digital IDs. The goal is to move a third online. Bizarrely, the latest Berlin budget cuts also involved significant cuts to digitalisation & IT programmes.
What does it mean if you cannot rent out 24 apartments (RBB, 🇩🇪) at 24€/m2 and up to 27,6€/m2 kalt in Neukölln (Hochhaus Ruth)?
a) they are too expensive for Neukölln,
b) there are not many people left who can pay these prices?
If I look at plenty of empty newly built apartments in my street, I am guessing that it is probably mostly b (or the owners haven’t moved in yet, but why not?). Commercial landlords are struggling, too!Our next Kanzler will have a lot to do, hopefully also ending the debt brake and potentially unlocking €400B for badly needed investments. Here is an overview of the candidates while you marvel at this sobering chart of drop in industrial production. This is significant, especially because manufacturing is so important for the German economy.
Great reset = post-COVID economic recovery Career: This is a very good article on career pivots with actionable advice at the end. “It's never too late to pivot your career/…/ but don’t rely on bootcamps, AI courses and certifications, or formal education alone.” Where do I sign?
Career: Is AI killing remote work? Interesting points from the Gumroad founder (a remote-first company, now shifting the approach). I’ve personally experienced how “spontaneous discussions, quick whiteboarding sessions, and energy of working together help teams think better, learn faster, and get unstuck more quickly.” The future of the office-only vs. fully remote spectrum likely depends very much on the type of role you have and the teamwork required for it to be successful.
Career: Here are compensation trends in Europe 2025 by Ravio, a salary benchmarking tool. It focuses on how companies across Europe are approaching hiring, salary increases, attrition, equity. You can find limited data on median salaries in the later pages of the PDF.
Timeless: Please listen to this Diary of a CEO podcast on toxic products most of us use daily. I did some background research, and Dr Burkart seems legit (google: “Burkart parabens”), even if I didn’t really love the low-tox-influencer-here-is-my-shop vibes on her channels. I also tested two ingredient-checking apps (paid CodeCheck and free Yuka), and somehow (or expectedly?), they produce different results for the same products. I already dumped some of the products I used. Take all of it with a grain of salt, and stay safe out there!
Timeless: A real fun page/irregular newsletter with a silly name: Practical Betterments. A lot of cool tips with a witty writeup style. I already renamed all my devices and changed my phone’s background.
📱 Weekly Social.
Twitter: Another great job description for a Chief of Staff.
Elsewhere: Nico wrote what All About Berlin is about.
💬 Briefly.
😔 Bad news: a lot of silent layoffs are going on, but nothing officially reported (besides the big DAX bois). Epsilico (aka Cinference, Berlin-based AI-based biologics) filed for bankruptcy.
Stats: Berlin is 89,112 hectares big (127,303 football fields), with urban settlements covering 55.9%, green spaces 22.8%, transportation infrastructure 14.7%, and water bodies 6.6% of the total area (Area survey 2023, St.BB). Sadly, I have no comparison to other capitals.
Remember Pokemon Go? The players were actually “paying” to work for Niantic. A brilliant move or a scam?
Peter Carlsson (ex-Tesla), CEO of (failed EU battery hope?) Northvolt, resigned.
Wero, a joint venture of 16 EU financial institutions and the EU competitor to PayPal, launched. It’ll be a hard battle to win.
ImmoScout24 acquired Berlin-based Selfmade Energy, a clean energy comparison platform. Lad-generator businesses going strong in Germany.
Klarna pumping hard before the IPO. Profit in Q3 up 57% YoY (€18.7M). They also claim AI implementation helped them reduce marketing (-16%) adn customer service costs (-14%).
Snocks (Mannheim, lifesytle brand) acquired insolvent Berlin-based Oceansapart, Berlin-based womenswear. (Business Insider)
Yikes. Solaris Bank urgently needs €100-150M by December to meet regulatory requirements and continue operations. (MM)
BlackForest Labs, German AI image startup, is in talks of raising $200M funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. (Bloomberg)
SumUp processed 1B+ transactions for the first time this year and now has 1M+ business account customers.
Here is a small reminder: please drop a Google review for me if you can spare a minute. Link above. A rating only will help as well.
💸 Recently funded in Berlin & Germany
is a list of companies that received funding over €1M.
I can’t remember the last time we had no Berlin companies on the list!
Predium | Munich | ESG platform for real estate management | €13M Series A | Careers.
Etalytics | Darmstadt | Energy management intelligence platform | €8M Series A | Careers.
Doctorflix | Potsdam | Medical education video learning platform | €4.1M Seed | Careers.
HyperHeat | Offenburg | High-temperature industrial heating technology | €3.5M | Careers.
😅 Meanwhile
they took the interview too seriously
✌️ Handpicked essentials and a treat:
- all the Handpicked Articles
- How to find a great company to work for?
- 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?
- Advertise in Handpicked
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