🚀 Amazon, Spotify, Theromondo and plenty of other links!
Issue #53 (29 May) – 30 jobs; 3000+ subs and supporter tier pitch; Flink in trouble?; earnings of Pfandpiraten and on how to get laid-off properly.
Programming note: We are now well over THREE THOUSAND, which is… just great! I published the annual overview this week and decided to significantly decrease the price for supporters. More about this later, and thank you for considering it!
My next mini-project is an open-source & anonymous salary survey: stay tuned; it’s coming soon.
👀 Handpicked twenty-one
📨 readers submitted
🗂️ database with 10 more jobs this way
🧞♂️ Outliers.
🎬 Projects & Product.
🇩🇪 Bundesverwaltungsamt - Projektleitung - Business-Continuity-Management
Deutsche Bank - BOOST Global Program LEAD & EMEA Transformation
💾 Data & Operations.
JPMorgan Chase & Co - Reporting and Analysis Integrations Control Manager
Norwegian Refugee Council - Data Governance and Data Management Lead
🌟 Handpicked Kleinanzeigen
Submit yours here or leave a comment. Please be fair to the readers and me.
😎 Cool stuff:
we did not look or offer anything cool this week. Do not be shy, drop links to the stuff you do ✌️
🔍 Searching for roles:
Punit is looking for Brand Strategy or Brand Marketing roles. Experienced in large-scale projects like brand repositioning, segmentation, brand architecture, and product launch marketing campaigns.
Stephanie has extensive experience in both project management and the marketing field. Professional, reliable, and well-organized. Seeking a similar role.
🤩 Consider becoming a supporter
Since launching the supporter tier in February, I collected valuable feedback and decided to make the supporter tier as accessible as possible on Substack. I am lowering the price to the minimums allowed by Substack: this is €5.00 per month and €30.00 per year (this means €2.5€ monthly or just €0.50-0.60 per email).
Every handpicked issue takes several hours weekly to produce. During the week, I keep YOU in mind, constantly trying to gather cool information and insights that could be useful or, hey, maybe even life-changing.
Your support will show me you value the effort that goes into handpicked content and encourage me to keep raising the standards for the content. If you find value in handpicked, I would love you to become a supporter. Not only will this help sustain it, but you will also invest in your growth and learning. Thank you for considering it. 🙏 You can upgrade here:
I revisited supporter benefits so you can see what you get. And yes, handpicked remains FREE.
🗞 Top inspiration snippets
🇩🇪 Berlin & Other good stuff
📉 Germany is, because of a second negative quarter in a row, officially in a mild recession (GDP fell by 0.3% for the last quarter). Well. On the other hand, some startups (esp. renewables) were hiring extensively last year, as the analysis of Sifted shows. To me, Helsing from the Sifted list sounds promising, but ask them if they have a product already. Careers.
👎 Most of the Google/Amazon/other reviews are useless. First, a lot of them are fake and second; they can be bought, and third, they are skewed because the majority of people never review.
did an extensive analysis of Glassdoor reviews after layoffs and I think the whole thing proves the point that looking at them is useless and a waste of time.💩 OpenAI founder Sam Altman said they might pull ChatGPT out of the EU because of the regulation shortly after he also told US regulators that AI should be regulated. I guess only his regulation is the correct regulation?
🛒 Instead of selling itself to Getir, Flink raised €150M from existing investors (they took a haircut to the highest valuation at €2.5B, now at around €1B). In addition, they are letting 100 employees in HQ go and are pulling out of France after their €100M Cajoo investment (🇩🇪, €). On top, Aldi Süd will experiment with delivery around Mülheim (🇩🇪) this July. Are you bullish or bearish?
☝️Big organisations are often arrogant and inefficient. It recently happened again to Microsoft, as reported in this anecdote where Satya Nadella scolded his R&D team. Another good lesson that the size and throwing money at things often doesn’t work.
😅 One of the weirdest political debates I have seen since in Berlin is around the closing of Friedrichstrasse for traffic. Now it will be open again from the 1st of July. But hey, what is the point of just closing a street without planting trees and making it much more pedestrian-friendly? They did it in many other cities, and it worked. Half-assed attempts make no sense.
✈️ Here is a longer profile in German of Ryanair and its success (🇩🇪) after their annual report. They are profitable, are expanding their fleet and want to hire 10k.
🧨 Before joining N26, you might want to read this great analysis from Miriam at Sifted. Bullish or bearish?
🐟 Here you have an Insta post of some of the best lakes around Berlin, which you should pair with this temperature monitoring when the time comes. From my perspective, the time is not here yet.
I tried what3words a couple of times, and I remember thinking, “Wow, what a great idea”, before going back to using Google Maps. This week I learned they burned £119M to generate £2.5M in revenue in the last six years. What a time to be alive. This, kids, is what a vitamin looks like instead of a painkiller.
☄️Great news. There is probably no imminent danger of getting erased by an asteroid: We still have at least 1000 years left on Earth unless we destroy it ourselves first!
😔 Bad news: Circus (Hamburg, 35/25%); Meta 6000 (unknown for Germany); Moss (Berlin, 30), Flink (Berlin, 100).
💡 Speaking of layoffs: I have previously linked to “how to act” guidance, but it was not as good as this LinkedIn post from Mayuri Reddy. Read it and share it.
🇹🇭 I have never been to Thailand or Thai Park yet, and this is changing soon; Exberliner has tips on what to eat in Thai Park. I am going with Pad Thai. See you around!
r/berlin choice of the week is this discussion about Pfandpiraten and how much they can earn. Fascinating! “They estimated that about 928,000 people actively collect Pfand in Germany. Of them, 56% make less than 4€ a day. Of them, 28% collect enough that it is their primary income.”
💬 Briefly: Solaris Bank is raising fresh money (€50M); Klarna moved its goal to reach profitability this summer to “this year” and is reportedly “on track”; Flix is expanding like there is no tomorrow: India will be its 42nd market; Neeva, a Google search ads-free alternative full of ex-Google execs, is no more; Meta was fined a record €1.2B for illegal data transfers from the EU to the US beating the previous record of €746M by Amazon.
💸 Recently funded in Berlin & Germany
Zageno | Berlin | Online marketplace connecting scientists, academic research institutes, and biotech manufacturers | $33.0M | Careers.
Ariadne | Munich | Location data and crowd analytics provider | $7M Series A | Careers.
LabDAO | Berlin | Open research organization built for computational life sciences | $3.6M seed | No careers.
COCOLI | Berlin | Offering an online platform for trading preloved quality design furniture | €3M Seed | Careers.
zero44 | Berlin | Aiding the maritime sector in attaining sustainability goals | €2.5M Series A | Careers.
Minoa | Berlin/San Francisco | Providing a management and customer insights platform for SaaS teams | $2.7M Pre-seed | Careers.
LANCH | Berlin | A virtual kitchen and food delivery platform for influencer-branded pizzas | €2.5M Pre-seed | Careers not there yet.
Sastrify | Cologne | Facilitating companies in managing their tech stack | $32M Series B | Careers.
Sunhat | Cologne | Streamlines processing of sustainability requests and ESG ratings | €2M | Careers.
🤓 Timeless and useful
Whenever you want to deliver amazing sh*t while on the way, you can check for laptop-friendly places at Laptopfriendly.co. And it works; at least for Berlin.
😅 Meanwhile
I was on three flights recently and
This is a footer ⏳ fact for you. In Germany, the “the average working hours are the lowest in the OECD countries. On average, German citizens work 1,349 hours a year, compared to 1,791 hours in the USA.”
✌️ Handpicked resources:
- The best questions to ask at a job interview
- Write it down now! Or why you should journal at work?
If you have made it this far, smash that like button or leave a comment!
Went to Thaipark myself with a few friends a couple weeks back. Everyone who got a pad thai (or anything noodle-y) was disappointed - I had a bite, it was very average. That being said, the fermented sausages were a 10/10, as was anything else that came on a stick. I also had the beef larb salad which was awesome.
Hi Igor, I am here since the beginning. I have to say your newsletter is great and has improved over time. I have to say it is one of the most entertaining and valuable reads of my week. Two things I am missing sometimes: I am a dev and I am looking for a techie part in your job stage. Also, the company selection is not always fitting to my personal values. For me a stage for sustainable (I know this wird is burned) or social or cooperative companies would be great. Thx for your work!