👍🏼 Your feedback matters: themed job selection is here!
Issue #55 (12 Jun) – Tech & Dev jobs; Salary Trends Survey needs your help; kidnapped cars; micro-mobility bans; google for buying books; flags and colour red.
Programming note: This week, I did my best and still failed to convince the mods of r/berlin to allow me to publish the salary survey. I am still trying on all fronts. The more I think about it, the clearer it is that such data is essential for employees, but I also understand that the results could be uncomfortable for some companies. Therefore the number of responses really MATTERS! HELP!
If you can share it on your socials, please do. Open until the end of the month.
Also important, after plenty of feedback, I decided to change the job selection: we will now have seven different themes. 😅 You can see my current thinking on handpickedberlin.com. Feedback welcome. I am excited to see how it goes.
👀 Handpicked twenty-one
📨 readers submitted
🗂️ database with 8 more jobs this way
🚨 Special opportunity
A great Berlin-based team; contact me for details:
An AI startup in stealth mode seeks a Backend/Middleware Engineer proficient in Node.js, database, CI/CD, and cloud infrastructure (GCP preferred). Front-end knowledge is a plus. Benefit from being one of the startup's pioneer engineers.
🧞♂️ Technology & Development
(ordered by A-Z on the position)
🇩🇪 Otis - Embedded Software Ingenieur für funktionale Sicherheit
🇩🇪 ASML - Project Engineer, Digitization in the Semiconductor Industry
Siemens Energy - Senior Data Scientist for Factory Digital Twins
Universal Music Group - Senior Frontend Engineer - Streaming Platform
Cariad - Working Student – System Observability and Intrusion Detection
Did you know you can also submit your GREAT positions? Those will be included almost in any case.
🌟 Handpicked Kleinanzeigen
Submit yours here or leave a comment. Please be fair to the readers and me.
😎 Cool stuff:
The Sovereign Tech Fund invites open-source users to contribute back, offering up to €300k for each four-month round of work on developer tooling, production security, and documentation of open-source infrastructure technologies.
🎨 I am looking for someone to help me with a minimalistic font-based logo for handpicked for Berlin. Besides a logo, I would also like to have stickers and a t-shirt. I will pay you and give you a lifetime supporter tier. Please send me your portfolio and a quote. I would expect one or two iterations.
☺️ DON’T BE SHY. SEND YOUR STUFF (things you need or want to share) OVER - button is juuuust below the next section.
🔍 Searching for roles:
A smiling Brazilian guy 😃 is looking for a startup/company where he can do an internship and write his master thesis (business and management). Also experienced professional in marketing, branding and project management.
Phaedra is a Berlin-based computational linguist with a professional and research background in conversational design, NLP and voice/chatbot apps. She is looking for a new role!
Em is looking for a creative role in Berlin's music sector. With 20 years in Western Australia's music industry as an educator, producer, and more, she's eager to build community through all opportunities, regardless of size.
🚀 Do you find value in handpicked? Consider becoming a supporter.
It is not much: around 60 cents per issue on the annual plan. What do 60 cents get you in Edeka? Not much. But here you get: ideas for new roles, useful links, things you never thought about, interesting stuff from Berlin, and maybe new connections and friends? How much are these things worth? I am biased, but I say AT LEAST 60 cents! 😎
Supporters get:
instant and searchable access to the entire archives (e.g. lookup any company to see if they were featured and how);
early access to exclusive handpickedberlin.com content (if applicable: with added supporter-only materials),
monthly “snippets” collection,
quarterly footer links archives summary,
additional supporter-only benefits in the future (e.g. discounted CV reviews and similar),
immediate access to the WhatsApp group “🍿handpicked hangout”,
prioritised access to future meet-ups.
🗞 Top inspiration snippets
🇩🇪 Berlin & Other good stuff
😎 I published April and May 2023 snippets and supporters only extra.
🤖 Everyone with 10 minutes had an opinion about AI in the last six months. And Marc Andreessen summed the discussion up extremely well. I like his “AI will save the world” optimism and the analysis, especially the points about Baptists and Bootleggers. 'Baptists' genuinely believe in the existential risks of AI and support regulations to avert disaster, and 'Bootleggers', typically CEOs, stand to profit from regulatory barriers insulating them from the competition. Worth a read!
REPORT:
Like probably everyone who wanted a ticket, I also got one for Himmel unter Berlin (Issue #52); it was worth it. Several excellent installations, and I am looking forward to the next one.
Based on advice in Community Kleinanzeigen, I also went to Supalife Kiosk and sadly had no method; I just browsed and browsed again and again. Ultimately, I bought a sketch of Siegessäule and am now on the market for a used Bohrmaschine.
🚅 Deutsche Bahn will offer ICE and IC tickets for under €10, valid from June 11 to July 31, including short routes only, such as Berlin-Wittenberg and Hamburg-Bremen. They should have done Berlin-Leipzig.
🚲 Again Deutsche Bahn: they partnered with Brompton Bicycle to offer a folding bike rental service for €41/month, with bikes allowed on buses and trains at no extra cost. The bikes are rumored to be quite heavy?
🧐 Return-to-Office policies take many different forms. Salesforce started a fundraising initiative, Connect for Good, where for each day an employee comes into the office from June 12 to June 23, the company will donate $10 to a local charity. Better than mandatory 2x in the office while being 300km away.
😅 In an unbelievable but real incident, a scam tow company in Berlin is 'kidnapping' parked cars and demanding €476 for disclosing the new location (🇩🇪). The police won’t need a special investigation.
😶 Oh, Rammstein. Rock’n’roll sometimes rape? The allegations are serious, and I believe them. I watched the complete video from Kayla Shyx, and she does have extremely valid points: a blatant abuse of power and influence. It reminded me of an incident back in Stuttgart when a Bekannte of my colleague did not want to leave her flat, and most people said, “Why did she let him in?” instead of “Why is he such a fucking idiot?”
📸 This video from a new opening of “The Alchemist” in Mitte (spoiler: everything is social-media/influencer ready) reminded me of this fantastic and weird article on How TikTok Took Over the Menu. “Another common issue is how to handle the disruptive LED flashlights needed to shoot video in dark dining rooms.” OR “Wherever the influencers land, once they are in a dining room, they’ll need something to record. The more action that can happen in front of them, the better.” PLEASE MAKE IT STOP.
📍Datenshutzultras are sweating. After a decade, Google is returning to Germany/Berlin to redo the Street View. It’s about time; my temporary flat close to Tempelhof looked like it was in a ghetto and had plenty of parking available.
🤑 Good news: Prices for dairy products started to fall; both Aldis and Kaufland reduced milk product prices on Wednesday, with other supermarkets likely to follow.
Stanford released the archive of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, 1945-1946. The opening statement from Justice Robert H. Jackson is 64 pages.
😔 Bad news: Staffbase (90); Zalando in hundreds (🇩🇪, paywalled); Mädchenflohmarkt, Efficient Energy insolvent; Tchibo (300).
r/berlin choice of the week is the culture of (excessive) tipping. Do you do it at a bar? Unrelated: I LOLed when reading that “Cremating cats was probably overkill” when someone asked what you can do if your apartment burns down.
⬇️ Venture capital firm Atomico predicts a 39% decrease in funding for European startups in 2023, falling from $83B in 2022 to $51B. This should affect Berlin as well. VC investment in German startups is expected to decrease by 44% in H1 2023, but this decline is less severe than in the UK and France, facing 57% and 55% reductions, respectively.
🛴 Bad news for micro-mobility companies: The April referendum banning electric scooter rentals in Paris from September has stirred the industry. A McKinsey study (Handelsblatt, 🇩🇪) reveals that 35 of the world's 100 most populous cities have already banned e-scooter rentals, citing safety and public space concerns.
💸 Recently funded in Berlin & Germany
Enpal raised €430M in debt for its solar leasing unit. Careers.
Payrails | Berlin | Scaling its next-generation financial operations (FinOps) platform | €13.5M Seed extension | Careers.
Spectrm | Berlin | Conversational marketing platform that helps brands to sell more on the biggest messaging platforms with marketing chatbots | €6.5M Series B | Careers.
Delphai | Berlin | AI models specifically trained to understand the global business landscape | €4.7M (with €900K grant from the German government) | Careers.
Biddz | Berlin | Connects fans and artists | €4.4M Seed | No Careers yet.
Tilta | Berlin | Building the technology that brings frictionless payment terms to B2B marketplaces and merchants | €4M Seed | Careers.
Wonnda | Berlin | Connecting brands with European manufacturers via its B2B marketplace | €1M | Careers.
Bookingkit | Berlin | Europe's leading booking and reservation management software for providers of tours and activities | €1M | Careers.
🤓 Timeless and useful
Whenever you buy or consider buying a book, you can use bookfinder.com; it will find the best prices for used and new books. Straightforward and clean. And now, grab that book you never read from your shelf.
😅 Meanwhile
someone is building a pool on an uneven surface
This is a footer 🔴 fact for you. Why do 75% of flags include the colour red?
✌️ Handpicked resources:
- The best questions to ask at a job interview
- Write it down now! Or why you should journal at work?
- Berlin Salary Trends survey
Are you reading this sentence? Top! Let me know by commenting or pressing the like button. ❤️
Just dropping by to say that your newsletter is really amazing, thanks for all the hard work!
Thx for the dev jobs, really appreciate it.
Another note: I would question the Kleinanzeigen section as it has a different focus then the rest of the newsletter. Idk but I think it’s less valuable for most of the readers.