Personal News & Musings
🫣 Sometimes I’ll overshare and/or rant a bit.
You may have noticed I’ve been missing in action. Work is busy, and I’m sorting out some personal things, which hasn’t left much mental space for writing. This might be the shape of things for the next few months while I figure stuff out, but I’ll keep the newsletter coming as best I can.
Speaking of work, the tech job market is the hardest it’s been in years. Searches are dragging on, and it’s a rough time to be looking. September usually wakes things up, so hold on until then. In the meantime, the market isn’t just shrinking, it’s re-sorting itself around AI, which has drastically changed how I do my own job too.
More on that below.
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Sound Off: Your Take on Germany
📊 Results of our weekly polls.
⁉️ Our last poll asked: Be honest, when an attack like this (the one at CSD in Berlin) happens, what do you do first?
This was a smaller poll with 54 votes, and the results still felt telling. The biggest group (39%) said their first instinct after an attack is to understand who was responsible and why, while 33% immediately think about the people affected. Another 19% deliberately step away from the hot takes, while only 9% brace for the political fallout first.
That curiosity about the “who and why” is understandable, as it’s a very human way of trying to make sense of something senseless. The only thing I’d gently add is that, as this DW analysis of Islamist and far-right extremism argues, reducing an attack to identity or nationality can end up feeding the very division extremists are hoping to create.
🫂 Take part in this week’s poll. If your tech job search feels harder than it should, it is not you. IT and engineering unemployment in Germany is at its highest since records began in 2011, and computer science openings fell 33% in a single year.
But look at what got cut and what got kept. SAP froze most hiring and internal travel, with exceptions only for AI-related roles, while the VDI insists this is a downturn and not a disappearing profession. Tech is not shrinking so much as re-sorting itself around one skill set.
I feel it in my own work. AI now drafts things I used to write from scratch, runs research I used to do manually, and helps me pressure-test an argument before I have to make it. Two years ago none of that was possible. I am not sure I could go back, and I am not sure I would want to. How about you?
🧑🏼🤝🧑🏽 Connect with others: Join our chat on Substack.
Companies Hiring Right Now
🇩🇪 5 German companies hiring right now.
Five German food and drink companies changing how we eat, from seaweed tuna to organic tofu:
BettaFish (Seaweed tuna that spares oceans)
Berlin | 3 jobs
Commercial lead, product developer, working student product developer.
🇩🇪 & 🇬🇧 | HybridLemonaid & ChariTea (Fair trade drinks funding social projects)
Hamburg, Cologne, + | 12 jobs
Director of people & culture, controller, field sales reps.
🇩🇪 &/or 🇬🇧 | Hybrid
KoRo (Bulk buying, less waste, fairer prices)
Berlin & Bremen | 7 jobs
Director supply chain planning, social creative lead, influencer marketing working student.
🇩🇪 &/or 🇬🇧 | HybridTaifun Tofu (Organic tofu from German-grown soy)
Freiburg | 9 jobs
AI manager, field sales representative, HR working student.
🇩🇪 &/or 🇬🇧 | Mostly onsiteVoelkel (Organic juices and plant drinks)
Höhbeck, Wendland | 9 jobs
Fruit juice technology specialist, company kitchen cook, label warehouse employee.
🇩🇪 | Mostly onsite
👋🏼 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
Small but mighty. Just 3 startups, but €110 M and 51 open roles between them. All three funded the week of August 3, across 3 German cities, and every one is hiring:
conmeet (Software for builders and craftspeople) - €6 M
Borken | 3 jobs
Customer onboarding specialist, IT support/help desk specialist, software tester/QA.
🇩🇪 | Hybrid/remote mixMoss (Corporate spend management platform) - €30 M
Berlin & Munich | 25 jobs
Head of sales, senior platform engineer, customer support associate.
🇩🇪 &/or 🇬🇧 | HybridNavVis (3D building reality-capture scanners) - €73.7 M
Munich | 23 jobs
Product manager (SaaS), team lead assembly, electrical engineer intern.
🇬🇧 | Hybrid/onsite mix
Another quiet one. 4 startups raised €3 M the week of August 10, across 4 German cities, and 2 are hiring for 6 roles:
Dr. Vivien Karl (Women’s intimate health shop) - Undisclosed
Berlin | 3 jobs
CRM manager, Shopify content student assistant, social media & content student assistant.
🇩🇪 &/or 🇬🇧 | Flexible working model, but you must be based in Berlin.Wasteside (Student sustainability rewards app) - €700 K
Heilbronn, Hanover, Bochum, Dortmund, Trier, Vorderpfalz | 3 jobs
SDR/founders associate sales, project manager/innovation lead, campus promotions mini-job.
🇩🇪 | Remote/hybrid mix
🧐 Key Insights
What last couple weeks of funding tells us:
A bigger raise doesn’t mean more jobs, and a small one isn’t a warning. NavVis raised €73.7 M with 23 roles; Wasteside raised €700 K with 3. Each hires for its stage. Don’t judge a company’s health by how many roles it posts, a funded firm with a few focused openings is often the safer bet.
The best entry-level roles sit at smaller, German-speaking companies. Wasteside’s campus minijob and Dr. Vivien Karl’s student-assistant roles are the kind of foot-in-the-door jobs newcomers need, and they’re not at the buzzy English-first startups. If you’re early-career and can work in German, that’s where you’ll face less competition.
Learn the deep-tech vocabulary to find the jobs. Terms like “reality capture,” “spatial AI,” and “electrolysers” hide great roles. Most people search “software engineer Berlin” and never find NavVis or Sunfire. Skim the funding descriptions, note the unusual words, and search those. Fewer people are applying there.
💸 Job hunting? See our weekly-updated list of 344 funded German startups, and who's hiring now.
Job Search/ Work Life Tips
🙌 Weekly career tips to keep you sane in Germany.
A question I get from coaching clients all the time, and one that frustrates me too: you’re told to customise your CV for every application, changing your profile statement, skills, even which projects you highlight. But then your LinkedIn says something different, and articles warn that recruiters reject applications over exactly that mismatch. So which is it?
The good news is that both are true, and they don’t conflict. Recruiters do cross-check your CV against your LinkedIn (and XING), but what gets you rejected is mismatched facts, not mismatched framing. Customise the story, never the facts.
3 things to get right:
Lock down the facts, let the framing flex. Job titles, employers and dates must match exactly everywhere, and in Germany that means to the month. Which projects you highlight and how you describe your impact can change per application.
Make LinkedIn your umbrella, not another tailored CV. Write it one level up: full scope of each role, biggest outcomes. Each tailored CV then zooms in on the slice that fits the job. A recruiter comparing the two should think “this is the detailed version of that,” never “wait, which one is real?”
Fix your job titles once, everywhere. Internal German titles often don’t match what the market calls the role. Pick the standard market title, use it on every platform, and put the internal one in brackets on your CV if needed. “Marketing Coordinator” on one document and “Marketing Manager” on another reads as inflation, even when it’s just inconsistency.
Bonus article: Workers turn to "polyworking" to fight frozen salaries and layoff fear, because one income increasingly feels like a single point of failure.
Just check your contract before starting anything, German employers usually need to be told about a Nebentätigkeit. For example, I had to sign a form with my current company to acknowledge my Berlin Life work.
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: Ever wanted to complain about German bureaucracy to someone who might actually do something? EinfachMachen is the government's own portal for reporting where the system is broken, seven clicks and done.
Recommended newsletters: 20% Berlin & Smart Living in Germany.
Weekly deals: Getsafe offers liability, pet and health insurance with English support throughout, and our referral link saves you €15.
Featured Germany Life Guide(s)
🔊 Guides to help you settle in Germany.
Three guides for the German admin nobody warns you about:
Moving, travelling long-term, or just tired of missing every registered letter? Mail forwarding in Germany covers how Nachsendeauftrag works and what it costs, which matters more than you think when your Anmeldung and your post are legally linked.
Your bike is probably the most expensive thing you leave outside, so bike insurance in Germany explains what your Hausratversicherung actually covers, when you need a separate policy, and what happens after a theft.
Wondering if buying is even possible on a foreign passport? How to buy property in Berlin as a foreigner walks through the process, the costs nobody mentions, and what German banks want to see before they lend to you.
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 meeting people in Berlin without the awkward small talk:
Aug 22: SheConnects: Coffee & Connect x LAP Coffee is a relaxed afternoon with in Bergmannkiez, built for anyone new to the city or looking for new friends. Conversation cards get things started, 15% off drinks, DJ set from 16:30. Registration needs host approval, and the event runs in German. Free.
Aug 25: TOBIAS & friends at Clärchens Ballhaus brings a Bavarian singer-songwriter and surprise guests to the Spiegelsaal, a 1913 ballroom that feels like another era. Gezellig Sessions curates for people who actually listen. Doors 18:30, music 19:30. €20.
Aug 27: City Daze Walking Club Lates at Volkspark Humboldthain is a 5km after-work stroll where you get paired with someone new at least twice, with conversation cards and a guided breathing pause along the way, ending at a social. Come solo, plenty do. 19:00–20:30, social until late. €4.99, pay what you can.
📅 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
Is Berlin transit getting better or worse? Genuinely both: more buses are returning after years of service cuts, but the S-Bahn to BER stays cut until Aug 31, air-conditioned trams are a 2032 promise, and the app 40,000 use to dodge ticket controllers now has the BVG examining legal options.
A mixed week for the Berlin you moved here for: nightlife scored a rare win as the RAW-Gelände venues can stay open, but arkaoda shuts at the end of August after nine years, the Adlon is reportedly for sale, and if you want to know where the housing market is heading, 217 micro-apartments are going into a Steglitz shopping mall.
Germany's demographic squeeze in one sentence: old-age poverty is rising in Berlin while the share of young people hits a historic low, which is worth remembering next time someone asks why Germany needs international workers.
In this week's episode of common sense taking a holiday: dozens of Berliners ended up in the ER after staring at the eclipse, and a former cop got busted running fake apartment listings.
German ID cards change from 2027, includes address stickers arrive by post instead of at the Bürgeramt, photos get bigger, and QR-style codes will speed up identity checks.
📈 Politics & Economy
Yikes! The AfD keeps extending its lead in national polls, and is now seriously contending for power in Saxony-Anhalt's state election. If you're still unsure what the party actually is, this explainer unpacks the far-right, populist, and extremist labels.
The anger lingers in me over this one. A club-booked swim event for Black children was cancelled after a far-right hate campaign, because the organisers could no longer guarantee the kids’ safety.
Signs Europe wants to stop depending on others for critical tech: the EU's Starlink rival IRIS² is nearing launch, while Germany just opened a drone research centre to close the gaps in its own defenses.
The timing writes its own joke. A cyberattack on the Berlin Senate leaked sensitive data, in the same month the government unveiled a 730-page draft law expanding intelligence powers, from covert phone searches to AI data analysis, which civil liberties groups warn goes too far.
German manufacturing hit a 4-year high, though one analysis argues the longer industrial decline isn't over, and RWE took $1.2bn from the Trump administration to abandon US wind for gas, a sentence that should not exist in 2026.
To end the section on something good: this DW video on an eastern German region reinventing itself is a small antidote to everything above.
👩⚕️ Immigration & Work
Job seekers, two useful signals this week. OpenAI picked Berlin for its second German office, and Germany's most-funded tech companies of H1 2026 just got ranked, and fresh funding usually means fresh openings.
To everyone who’s ever lost an afternoon to a Bürgeramt: a new study says Berlin’s bureaucracy isn’t just annoying, it’s costing the city thousands of jobs that fewer regulations could create.
In news every international will greet with cautious hope … Berlin plans to modernize all 45 Bürgerämter with brighter offices, express counters for urgent matters, and more time per visit.
💃🏻 Fun, Thoughtful, and/or Useful
Karls founder Robert Dahl is spending 24 hours straight on his own rollercoaster on October 16, and a five euro donation buys you the seat next to him.
Berlin fashion week happened, and Vogue's street style slideshow proves the all-black dress code is finally negotiable.
The Stadtmuseum just became the Berlin Museum, with a new identity built from typography lifted off U-Bahn stations and currywurst stands.
These decolonial walking tours connect Berlin’s streets to Africa’s past, and they will change how you see your own neighbourhood.
In Case You Missed It
📩 What landed with readers last week.
Last edition: In our last blast, we featured 5 German deep-tech companies hiring right now, as well as guides about probation and notice periods in Germany. We also got into recent news, including what’s changing in Germany this month, positive news on green energy, and travel recommendations in Germany.
Most read: You certainly picked up what we were putting down, including a link to my Germany-based financial advisor, general tips for negotiating a higher salary, and this short list of German Youth Word of the Year.
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