🔍 What's your current team setup? Plus, a €500M round from Heidelberg!
Issue #77 (13 Nov) – HR + other jobs; Berlin crises; are Product managers useless?; 3526 free calculators and weed on a private jet.
Programming note: We are 4,900+ now. I am chasing the next magic number, and I would be happy if you shared this newsletter and the idea of it with someone. If you need to explain it, you could say: “It’s mostly about jobs and careers in Berlin, and I always find something interesting.” Or: “Trust me, you’ll like it!” Or whatever you feel fits.
🌟 Handpicked Kleinanzeigen & Tech Events
🎪 Upcoming Events:
📨 Selling Big: Sales Mastery for Startups & Scaleups | Thu, 23.11 at 17.30 | B-Part Am Gleisdreieck
📨 Berlin Product Managers #3: Catalyze collaboration | Thu, 23.11 at 18.30 | Pitch
App Promotion Summit Berlin 2023 | Thu, 30.11 at 9.00 | Hotel Adlon
😎 Cool stuff:
Manoj is organising a cosy, living room concert in the heart of Berlin-Mitte with 60-70 people and 3 secret artists (indie, folk, singer-songwriter vibes). 20% off with a code HANDPICKED.
Lara has a real passion for SEO. She specializes in helping freelancers and entrepreneurs improve their Google rankings. Her goal? To demystify SEO and give you the skills to take control. Connect with Lara for guidance with your SEO strategy.
🔍 Searching for roles:
Katie is looking for a Junior Data Analyst position in Berlin! She's a credit and data analyst with several years of experience in Finance and Banking
Alexandra is looking for a full-time role at companies that have a positive impact. 3 years experience in Employer Branding, and a decade of Marketing Communications and Content experience. Native English, B2 German.
Your friendly neighbourhood frontend engineer is here! Philipp is a pragmatic and user-focused frontend engineer looking for a new adventure. Preferred tech stack is React/Next.js and Typescript.
👀 Handpicked twenty
📨 Readers submitted
submit yours on the link; You can still get these links for free with tens of clicks from the Handpicked community. What’s not to like?
🧞♂️ HR & Recruitment
More positions from different categories in Handpicked online database.
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I spent hundreds of hours on Handpicked in #77 issues in the last 1.5 years; I love doing it and have great stuff coming from the back burner (👨🏻🍳). I love all the support and the energy you and your feedback have been giving me!
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🗞 Top inspiration snippets
🇩🇪 Berlin & Other good stuff
💈 I published a review of Weddingmarkt in, yes, Wedding, on my Insta. While there you can check the reel from our last event, Pub Quiz.
🥷 Berlin crises: Housing is also in crisis because many “old” Berliners sit on ancient contracts. Report on sublet torture by exBerliner. And clubs ($1.6B business) are in crisis also because … they are too selective?
😟 Commercial real estate in Berlin has also seen better days! WeWork has 11 locations here and has officially filed for bankruptcy (Softbank lost $6.2B with it!). They say operations in Germany aren’t affected, but who knows? Actually, Mindspace’s CEO, Mr. Lehmann, thinks he does. Insecure landlords already offered them locations. (More, 🇩🇪) Also, massive Signa-Holding (Karstadt and other projects) is in trouble. (RBB, 🇩🇪) Many call for the head of its founder, René Benko, one of the richest Austrians.
🎧 The noise map of Berlin allows you to check the levels on most of the streets. Noise is terrible for concentration and health; I noticed how loud the city is after I started using noise-cancelling headphones on my walks.
⚙️ One of the reasons why Germany is a rich country (check out Switzerland too):
🕵️ Your manager is probably the most important person career-wise. So, if you are interviewing, check out these tips from Erika about ways to get information on your future manager. Remember, shovelling shit with a great team can still be fun, but a great topic in a shit team will eat you alive.
😅 Are you a product manager or want to become one? This exploded on Hacker News some weeks ago: “The product manager role is a mistake.” It’s a bit cynical but has valid points, for example: “The enormous mistake you can make is to adopt a model that requires tremendous people without having these tremendous people.” Related, debate on HN. Now, let me go back to my Jira tickets.
➗ Click around: Your life in 3526 free calculators. Groceries, ticket optimizers, break-even, health stuff. I mean, whatever you want, its there, with good explanations. An extremely clean website. Let us know if you find anything amazing in the comments.
🥳 Eight factors of happiness (a graphic) is a nice reminder not to waste energy on things you cannot change.
😔 Bad news: Vanguard (published here) shutting down German wealth platform; NIO -10%.
r/berlin choice of the week is this comment on a typical Kleinanzeigen furniture scam: they will say they are interested in your furniture and when picking it up start to negotiate hard. Beware! Also, OKSE 126 (CMYK Dots) made it to Reddit. Comments are fun.
💬 Briefly:
Berlin hosted 19.2% more guests and had 14.4% more overnight stays in 2023 than in 2022, but this is still 13.2% below 2019. (St.BB)
Banking: Every second Postbank stores will be closed until mid 2026 by Deutsche Bank (now 34 in Berlin). N26 is leaving Brazil. It left the US market in 2021, focusing on Europe.
Refurbed, a Vienna-based second-hand competitor to Berlin-based Back Market raised €54M Series C. Careers. Funny, but when googling the company name, no ads came up. This can only mean belts tightened.
Remember self-driving cars/taxis promise? It turns out that US-based Cruise needs 1.5 people to operate one Robotaxi which is exactly 0.5 more than a normal taxi. I am bearish. (More, 🇩🇪)
Robinhood, a trading platform, will expand into EU following the UK launch. Careers. Impacts Scalable and Trade Republic.
Siemens Energy started the production of electrolyzers for hydrogen factories in Moabit. Capacity expansion is planned. Means jobs. Careers.
Clark appointed Benedikt Kalteier as new German CEO, with co-founder Adelt stepping back.
Tesla increased the salaries in Gigafactory for 4%, 11k employees will also receive a one-off 1.5k. Peanuts compared to their colleagues from the south.
For the first time since 2018, Klarna turned a profit, €11.3 million in the Q2. They also set up a UK entity for the planned IPO, targeting $15B+ value.
Delivery Hero was fined €630k by BaFin for not disclosing insider info as required. AirBnB €780M in Italy for unpaid taxes over 5 years.
💸 Recently funded in Berlin & Germany
Raus | Berlin | Nature-immersive cabin rentals | €8.5M | Careers.
doctorly | Berlin | Healthcare digitization with innovative practice software | $7.2M extended Series A | Careers.
Langfuse | Berlin | Observability and analytics for LLM applications | $4M Seed | Careers.
🚨 Aleph Alpha | Heidelberg | AI technology for enterprise applications | €500M Series B | Careers.
InPlanet | Munich/Piracicaba | Regenerative agriculture to remove carbon from the atmosphere | €4.3M | Careers.
StrollMe | Munich | Subscription-based baby gear | €3.6M | Careers.
deepeye Medical | Munich | Ophthalmologic care through AI-powered diagnostics | €2.5M Seed | Careers.
EZE | Munich | Accelerating the rollout of public charging infrastructure for EVs | Mid-single-digit million investment | No careers.
😅 Meanwhile
wild if true
This is a footer 🤯 fact for you: Google spent a total of $26.3B in 2021 to be the default search engine in multiple browsers, phones, and platforms. $18B goes to Apple. (TheVerge)
✌️ Handpicked essentials:
- Berlin Salary Trends Report 2023: How do you compare?
- Want to get reminded for the next salary survey?
- The best questions to ask at a job interview
- What do hiring managers look for in CVs?
✨ Berlin Events Weekly: the best resource for events in Berlin ✨
🐯 How did you like it, tiger/tigress? Let me know in the comments or by e-mail. Did we land in spam? What is it that it’s missing? Likes also help. ♡
Hi there Igor,
If I wanted to appear into the 😎 Cool stuff section of the newsletter with my new project, how should I go about it?
“… Cruise needs 1.5 people to operate one Robotaxi which is exactly 0.5 more than a normal taxi.” 💀