💸 Shall we do a salary survey for Berlin 2023?

Issue #41 (27 Feb) – first article for supporters, the art of Cacio e Pepe, Steve Jobs on failure and an insider report from Google.

Feb 27, 2023

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Programming note: I will add additional links in each issue for supporters from next week on. You can support my work in many different ways: for example, mention it to someone saying: “You know, there is this newsletter which picks cool links and jobs. It’s called handpicked, and it sometimes autocorrects to handlicked.”

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📨 readers submitted
🗂️ database with two more jobs this way

🧞‍♂️ Outliers.

🎬 Projects & Product.

💾 Data & Operations.

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🗞 Top inspiration snippets

No big rounds this week. How dry will it get in the coming months?

🇩🇪 Berlin & Germany

Volocopter, a Bruchsal-based flying taxi company, raised some more money in their extended Series E. Careers.
Choco, a Berlin-based gastro champion, raised €25M. Careers.
konfetti, a Berlin-based team events & workshops marketplace, raised €2M. Careers.
Finway, a Munich-based credit card startup, raised €9.2M. Careers.
HBOX, an Aachen-based health tech, raised €2.3M. Careers are not there yet. Their Linkedin.
Flexvelop, a Hamburg-based equipment leasing company, raised €3M. Careers.
Aleph Alpha, a Heidelberg-based AI company, claims that its LLM Luminous is better and more efficient than ChatGPT. Careers are not really in focus.
planqc, a Munich-based quantum computing startup, got a seven-figure investment from Hermann Hauser. He also took a board seat. Careers is more like an e-mail.
🔓 I published the first article for supporters last week: all the links from the "timeless and useful" section published in 2022.
🧑🏻‍💻 Hybrid, remote, on-site, four-day week. Thanks to Corona we can all have strong opinions! For example, Startups with employees in offices grow 3 1/2 times faster and Four-day week: ‘major breakthrough’ as most UK firms in trial extend changes. From my experience office brings a great dynamic to solve complicated problems. But whatever rocks your boat, CEO and Head of HR.
👨🏻‍🍳 If you have ever wondered how you could make excellent Cacio e Pepe, one of the hardest simplest things to make, look no further: last week I published the last words that were left to be said about it.
🇷🇺 You probably heard about the tank in front of the Russian embassy which was placed there on the anniversary of the start of this moronic war. Here you can read what it takes to make something like this happen. (🇩🇪) I have strong opinions on “demo for peace”, but let’s leave politics out of business!
Remember the big European energy crisis and theories on Putin playing 3D chess with gas? I vaguely do. As it turns out Germany already has enough gas for next winter.
🎥 BVG's marketing department is excellent. They have a good sense of humour and made a new commercial to invite us to explore Berlin, based off €49 Deutschland ticket. Du warst noch niemals in Marzahn or Visselhövede, Lower Saxony …🐻🐺
… the advice is always the same: when facing some big beast, do not run; make yourself big and loud. Well, this 24-year-old cyclist did not really follow the advice (🇩🇪) after being chased for 200m by three wolves in Lower Saxony. She got saved by her e-bike. I mean, fair enough, wildlife experts: but would you stop and make yourself big? You now know where to meet wolves in Germany.
🚃 If you ever wondered why some newer S-Bahn trains do not have the legendary TANAANAAAA sound, it is to make trains more accessible for people with disabilities and people with reduced mobility EU-wide. Related: Adi from Arbeitnow made a guide for shifting to the new 49€ Deutschland ticket in English. 🙏
layoffs.fyi & other sources: Onefootball (150, 32%), Zalando is planning to let hundreds of their 17k people go, RBB (100), Sono Motors (Munich, hundreds), Auto 1 made losses of 165.6M in 2022 and Banovo (Munich) is insolvent.
r/berlin choice of the week is the discussion about spiders; I hope I do not meet one of these.
To experience socialism, you do not need to move to North Korea or Cuba. You can book this apartment in Prignitz, two hours from Berlin. It will set you back 100€/night.
When looking from the outside things often look better than they are. Here is an insider perspective on Praveen leaving Google. Some of the things he mentions really are a pattern in many organisations, and it really makes you wonder: what are the upper limits on an organisation's size? Is it 15? 150? 1500? 15k? 150k?

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🤓 Timeless and useful

I am still to read Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs and did never have a strong opinion of the man, but here is an excellent piece of advice he gave about failure. Ask for help, act, and be willing to fail! 1:42 long Youtube clip that cannot be embedded.