Personal News & Musings
🫣 Sometimes I’ll overshare and/or rant a bit.
Saxony-Anhalt’s AfD win is sitting heavy with a lot of us this week. While that’s really freaking worrying, it’s one state, not the country. The AfD still isn’t close to national power, and it’s worth holding onto that distinction, even on a grim week.
And then, because 2026 apparently wasn’t done with us, Germany’s proposed 2027 tax reform is genuinely breaking my brain.
More on both below.
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Sound Off: Your Take on Germany
📊 Results of our weekly polls.
⁉️ Our last poll asked: Do you think you’re being paid less than a German colleague doing your job?
Last week’s poll numbers reflect a real and/or perceived pay divide, and that was from a mere 141 votes.
After the AfD recently asked the government to examine whether immigration was depressing wages, the response instead highlighted how disproportionately foreigners themselves are represented in low-wage work. Unsurprisingly, 30.6% of foreign workers are low-wage earners, compared with 12.3% of Germans.
Our community seems to feel that gap personally. 27% said they know for a fact they’re paid less than a German colleague doing the same job, while another 36% suspect it but can’t prove it. That’s 63% who believe there may be a pay gap in their own workplace.
With recognition of foreign qualifications also slowing, the question isn’t only whether Germany can attract skilled workers, but whether their skills are being valued once they’re here, and if they will ultimately stay.
🫂 Take part in this week’s poll. What’s planned for your payslip from 2027 includes a higher tax-free allowance, a bigger employee lump sum and more Kindergeld, but no fix for cold progression. This is when your raise just covers inflation, but the tax system still shoves you into a higher bracket for it, so you end up taxed more on money that isn't actually worth more.
The tax-free allowance is set to climb from €12,348 to €12,564 in 2027, then €12,900 by 2028, and the top tax rate threshold shifts up too, meaning a slightly bigger slice of your income gets taxed at the lower rate. But a tax expert told ZDF the reform's gains could be wiped out by cold progression before you ever see them.
🧑🏼🤝🧑🏽 Connect with others: Join our chat on Substack.
Companies Hiring Right Now
🇩🇪 5 German companies hiring right now.
In tribute to two feminist icons we lost recently, Gloria Steinem and Dolly Parton, here are five Berlin companies in the business of women's health, pleasure and everything the mainstream skips.
Amorelie (Online sex toy retailer)
Berlin | 1 job
Amazon marketplace manager.
🇩🇪 & 🇬🇧 | HybridClue (Period and reproductive health app)
Berlin | 5 jobs
Team lead engineering, VP of product, junior CRM manager.
🇬🇧 | Hybridfemtasy (Audio erotica streaming platform)
Berlin | 1 job
Data analyst.
🇬🇧 | Hybridsaint sass (Lingerie brand with attitude)
Berlin | 3 jobs
Creative strategist internship, influencer marketing internship, e-commerce operations internship.
🇩🇪 &/or 🇬🇧 | OnsiteXbyX (Menopause supplements for women)
Berlin | 5 jobs
Head of performance marketing, e-commerce manager Shopify, email marketing working student.
🇩🇪 &/or 🇬🇧 | Hybrid
Bonus read: Little known about Dolly Parton is that she struggled with endometriosis, had a partial hysterectomy, and was one of the first celebrities to speak out about her female health issues. And, why companies like this are so vital.
👋🏼 That’s not all: See our weekly-updated database of 400+ Berlin companies hiring right now.
Recently Funded Startups
🤑 German startups that recently raised new funding.
📊 Weekly Snapshot
After a slow August, business is picking up again. Last week, 9 German startups across 5 different locations raked in approximately €180 M in reported funding.
Of these companies, 8 are hiring for 72 jobs:
Atira (Sales automation for machinery makers) - $15 M
Munich | 11 jobs
AI engineer, business development representative, entrepreneur in residence.
🇩🇪 & 🇬🇧 | OnsiteCloover (Home energy systems platform) - €86.2 M
Berlin | 17 jobs
Lead legal counsel, senior software engineer, corporate finance intern.
🇩🇪 &/or 🇬🇧 | Onsite/remote mixHyImpulse (Hybrid-propulsion space transport) - €50 M
Neuenstadt am Kocher | 12 jobs
Chief design engineer, institutional business development manager, composite technician.
🇬🇧 | Mainly onsite, 1 day per week homeINLEAP Photonics (Laser counter-drone systems) - €20 M
Hannover | 10 jobs
Head of product, optical engineer, office manager.
🇩🇪 &/or 🇬🇧 | Mainly onsitePhase0 (Software for architecture offices) - €2.6 M
Berlin | 6 jobs
Senior product engineer, head of demand generation, account executive.
🇩🇪 &/or 🇬🇧 | Work model unknown, ask during interviewsReformer Club (Reformer pilates studio chain) - €2 M
Düsseldorf, Mannheim, Munich, Hamburg, Berlin | 10 jobs
Studio manager (Düsseldorf), marketing manager, pilates instructor.
🇩🇪 | Mainly onsite, some remote optionsSkylance (Laser-guided counter-drone munitions) - €1 M
Hürth | 1 job
Embedded simulations engineer
🇩🇪 & 🇬🇧 | Work model unknownZeit AI (AI for finance and supply chain) - €5 M
Munich | 5 jobs
Backend engineer, junior account executive, senior business development representative.
🇩🇪 &/or 🇬🇧 | Onsite.
🧐 Key Insights
What last week’s round of funding tells us:
2 out of 9 companies are defence focused, and hiring in English. INLEAP and Skylance both make counter-drone systems, and INLEAP wants a head of product and an office manager, not only engineers. Defence is now a normal part of the German job market, see the Munich boom as a case in point. Decide how you feel about it before you apply.
Zeit AI is openly paying above German market rate, listing €95K to €270K for a backend engineer and €120K to €150K for a junior account executive. Unusual for Germany, where salaries are rarely posted at all. When a startup publishes numbers like these, it’s a signal it is competing for talent with US companies.
The best-funded company is hiring for the most ordinary jobs. Cloover raised €86 M, and its openings include a corporate finance intern, a legal counsel, and a growth manager. Large raises fund whole companies, not just product teams. If you’re not an engineer, look for work at similar startups.
💸 Job hunting? See our weekly-updated list of 365 funded German startups, and who's hiring now.
Job Search/ Work Life Tips
🙌 Weekly career tips to keep you sane in Germany.
Most job ads in Germany still don’t list a salary, so before you accept an offer or counter one, tools like Kununu Gehälter, Gehalt.de, or the government’s own Entgeltatlas (referenced in last week’s edition) let you check the median for your role, region, and experience level. Pair that with the Entgelttransparenzgesetz from last week if you’re already employed and want to check your current pay against colleagues, not just the market.
One catch is that self-reported salary data isn’t always reliable. One study that compared self-reported German wages against actual payroll records found people tend to underreport, not inflate. So if anything, the number you see might understate the market rate.
Bonus article: Mass-applying to every listing feels productive but this strategy does more harm than good. What “doomjobbing” costs you, and a three-step fix that works instead.
Also, if you need a giggle, watch this video about the cringe that is corporate jargon.
If you want help improving your CV or job applications for the German market, I’ve got you. 👉🏼 Learn more or book a session here.
Germany Life Hacks
🥨 Things to make life in Deutschland (a little bit) better.
Hot tip: Calculate your projected 2027 take-home pay. Plug in your gross salary, and see your net under the incoming rules. Official brackets aren't final yet, but it's the closest thing to a real answer right now.
Recommended newsletters: 20% Berlin & Smart Living in Germany.
Weekly deals: Petolo offers insurance coverage for your precious fur babies. The first month is free, and you’ll get a €30 Amazon voucher when you signup through our link.
Featured Germany Life Guide(s)
🔊 Guides to help you settle in Germany.
Three guides for the week we found out our 2027 payslips might not stretch as far as promised:
If the tax reform has you rethinking your budget before it even passes, saving money in Germany covers where the real leaks are and what’s actually worth cutting.
Want a bigger buffer against whatever cold progression takes back? Negotiating salary in Germany walks through how to ask, when to push, and what actually moves the number.
Before you negotiate anything, know where you stand, salary ranges in Germany breaks down what’s typical by role, region, and experience level.
ℹ️ More where that came from:
60+ guides on living and working in Germany.
We also have a podcast. See our past episodes.
Our Events (+ Other Events)
🎟️ A weekly event round-up.
This week is about showing up somewhere with no agenda and seeing who you meet:
Sept 10: Morning Walk & Talk with Deep Work Club is a 30-minute walk from The Delta Campus in Neukölln for founders and operators, with one question to think about along the way and coffee and a pastry on them. 8:30–9:30, registration needs host approval. Free.
Sept 12: Offline Rooftop Hangout at The Circus Living asks you to put your phone down and gives you an hour of reading or journaling to live music, then an hour of talking through golden hour. Stay on the terrace until 21:00. 16:15–19:45. €12.50.
Sept 19: A trip to Pfaueninsel with The Gathering Grounds is a day out to Peacock Island, with a few light challenges on arrival and a picnic afterward. Bring vegan snacks to share. Meet at 11:00 at the Bus 218 stop. Free, and the ferry is €6 return.
📅 Subscribe to our calendar to receive event alerts from The Berlin Life as they happen.
News in Germany
🗞️ The inside scoop on what’s happening in Germany.
🏠 Daily Life
New data on young Germans splits by gender 3x over, with more men than women under 30, young women cutting back their drinking while young men haven’t, and boys and girls drifting toward different subjects at school.
Not all billionaires are evil?! Germany’s richest man died childless and left his entire €42 B to his charitable foundation, now one of Europe’s largest.
File this one under actual progress. 18 months after the first one crashed, a Munich-built rocket made European history from Norway.
OpenAI knew for weeks and said nothing (!) while its agents hijacked a German site to share ways around its rules.
📈 Politics & Economy
Saxony-Anhalt's AfD win is already reshaping the ground for minorities and the economy, as minorities in Magdeburg are weighing whether to stay, economists project €1,600 lost per person and 10,000 jobs gone, and a three-seats-short majority leaves BSW holding the balance. Will anyone collaborate with the AfD?
Everyone agrees Berlin's flat shortage is real, nobody agrees on why. The ifo points to the rent cap and expropriation plan, Mieterverein calls that a stretch, and meanwhile the EU's aiming at a different culprit entirely, giving cities new power to restrict tourist rentals.
Germany's factory orders keep climbing, but the slump isn't over, as growth is all exports, with no domestic demand.
Six things just got more expensive in Germany, including utilities (€351/month, up from €121 in 2012), the Deutschlandticket (+6.1%), petrol (an all-time high), Netflix (+40% on the ad tier), and even your Oktoberfest Maß, with IKEA the lone exception, slashing prices on 1,500 products.
The hacker plot just thickened. If your data is with Berlin's authorities, 1.4 million stolen records are now public, released after the €2 M ransom deadline passed unpaid.
👩⚕️ Immigration & Work
Showing not much has changed since the 18th century: "Why should they be suffered to swarm into our Settlements... they will never adopt our Language or Customs". So said Benjamin Franklin about Germans. This DW piece traces how a country that 6M people fled became one people arrive in, and why a migration researcher calls today's debate "a massive distortion.”
We're actually 13.6 million people here now, mostly Poles, Turks and Ukrainians, with 63% from elsewhere in Europe. An important distinction that the far-right conveniently leave out of their “immigrant invasion” narrative.
💃🏻 Fun, Thoughtful, and/or Useful
Berlin's best pizza has been settled by popular vote, and the winner is the place that started the Neapolitan boom in the first place, with 25 more sorted by neighbourhood.
Berlin now has a celebrity vegan Döner shop, because of course, and the queues on opening day rivalled that of Mustafa's.
Roughly 1/3 of Berlin's streets are named after somewhere else, and this map shows you which, including whole neighbourhoods themed around England, Belgium and Scandinavia.
In Case You Missed It
📩 What landed with readers last week.
Last edition: If you missed our last newsletter, read it for insights on pay disparity between Germans and immigrants, rules around finding out how much colleagues in a similar position earn, and where to go for median salaries by profession, region, and experience level.
Most read: The most clicked links were my guide on the fastest-growing jobs in Germany, a feature from The Berliner on what people are wearing in Berlin, and a tool to check which German party you most closely align with.
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