Hello,
last Tuesday we had our third Everyday Club, this time for Product Teams. It was great to see amazing demos and speak to so many interesting people. You can see some impressions here. I would also like to recommend our photographer Arundhati for your events or portrait work. Have a look at her work.
We are already planning more events. You'll find them in the Featured events below.
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📌 Pinned
The German car industry is close to me. I worked for Mercedes for a long time and I will be forever grateful for the opportunities I got. But it seems I left at an absolute peak. A couple of years down the road and the whole German car industry just had the worst reporting week… ever? Keyword: China.
Volkswagen lost €5.82B in the third quarter, mostly because of a €6.4B write-down on Porsche, and sold 38.5% fewer cars in China. For this year, VW now expects an operating margin of at most 1% (the plan was 4 to 5.5%). BMW cut its forecast again: EBIT fell about 30% to €1.59B, deliveries in China were down 25%, and the car business now aims for a margin between -0.5% and +0.5%. Audi's profit after tax fell 87% to €95M, again because of China.
I previously linked to this Adam Tooze's piece on Western carmakers in China, (now for the third time already). In short, if you are not big in China, you are more or less done. Years of mismanagement (and a lot of arrogance) are now catching up. But I also asked myself: was this downfall inevitable? Or could they have done something differently? Probably betting strongeron EV would work better today.
The EV reality is now hitting Germany hard. In October, 94k new EVs were registered, almost 80% more than a year ago and more than one in three new cars. But every second one came from an international brand. Well.
The only question remaining is how far the industry will shrink and if any of the brands will ever be sold to a Chinese company.
How close is the automotive crisis to your job?
🌍 Community board
Zed Productions is running Doc School, a six-week evening documentary-making workshop in Berlin led by industry professionals. Beginners are welcome, Mondays and Wednesdays from November 9, near Hermannplatz, €360–550 sliding scale pricing.
Adnan is researching how AI shapes startup internationalization for his master's thesis at the University of Vienna and wants to hear from founders of young European startups — 30 minutes chat, anonymous. Reach out on LinkedIn.
Last week I asked you how your job search is going right now: 38% are applying into the void, 14% aren't looking and are happy where they are, 13% just landed something, 12% aren't looking but keep their CV ready, 12% are interviewing with fingers crossed, and 12% have paused the search for now.
Have an ask, offer or useful project? Share it!
💸 Funded in Germany
Pliant | Berlin | Modular B2B payment platform | $80M Series C | Careers.
Conlio | Berlin | AI freight invoice automation | €6.4M | Careers.
Marble Cognition | Munich | AI coworkers that learn by observing | $3.75M pre-seed | Careers.
Cellbox | Cologne | Temperature-controlled transport for living cells | €1.5M Series A extension | Careers.
Quint Computing | Erlangen | Quantum computing hardware and software | €9.1M | Careers.
StrollMe | Frankfurt | Subscription rental for children's gear | €22M equity and debt | Careers.
VUSE XR | Freiburg | AI-powered mixed-reality training software | €1.2M pre-seed | Careers.
MuRay | Hamburg | Muon imaging for rocket engines | €7.1M | Careers.
Enginsight | Jena | Cybersecurity for companies and public bodies | undisclosed amount | Careers.
Hypersonica | Munich | Hypersonic missiles for European defence | €100M Series B | Careers.
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📡 Signals
Pay & conditions
Germany's metal and electrical sector is in the middle of negotiations: IG Metall wants 5% more pay over 12 months plus job and site guarantees, while employers have offered a one-off payment plus a 1.3% rise from July 2028; warning strikes began Sunday. Employer association Gesamtmetall says a further 300k jobs are at risk over the next two to three years, on top of 350k lost since 2019. This would leave the sector at 3.4M employees, the lowest since reunification. [more]
Hiring & expanding
Tesla (US, autos) opened a new engineering centre in Köpenick, Berlin. For now for 250 employees.
Bella&Bona (Munich, office catering) turned profitable delivering 60k meals a month and is expanding into North Rhine-Westphalia.
Cutting & closing
Schaeffler (Herzogenaurach, auto parts) is cutting 3.46k jobs across Europe, 2.66k of them in Germany, and closing its Dortmund, Morbach, Berlin and Schwalbach sites, citing Europe's auto crisis. [more]
Gropyus (Austria, construction tech) filed several subsidiaries for insolvency after promised investor funding failed to arrive, affecting about 550 employees across Vienna, Berlin and two other sites; parent Gropyus AG itself is not affected. [more]
Mientus (Berlin, menswear retail) will close its last remaining store next spring, ending its almost 90-year run.
Elli (Berlin, EV charging), Volkswagen's energy and charging unit, is restructuring its business to reach profitability — a shift that could also mean job cuts. [more]
Company health & ownership
Delivery Hero (Berlin, food delivery) passed 1B quarterly orders for the first time, up 11.5%, with revenue up 22% to €4.3B, and raised its 2026 EBITDA outlook to €980M-1.02B. Uber's €41.50-per-share bid, valuing it at just under €13B, is now in its acceptance period, ending today. [more]
MediaMarktSaturn (Ingolstadt, electronics retail) can be bought by China's JD.com after the EU approved the deal for parent company Ceconomy — on condition JD.com offers rivals the same logistics and tech terms, to offset its Chinese state subsidies.
Evonik (Essen, chemicals) rejected BASF's renewed pressure, reporting Q3 adjusted operating profit up 40% to €629M and reaffirming its independent strategy, after BASF raised its takeover bid to €11.2B from €10.3B.
Hivebuy (Berlin, procurement software) is being acquired by Conrad Electronic.
Finn (Munich, car subscription) co-founder Maximilian Wühr is handing the CEO role to Patrick Oliver Schmidt. His goal will be European expansion.
Vonovia (Bochum, housing) lowered its 2028 targets, cut investment plans and slowed new construction due to rising interest rates.
Bayer (Leverkusen, pharma) raised its full-year targets as new drugs drive profit. [careers]
Cohere (Toronto and Berlin, AI) completed its merger with Heidelberg's Aleph Alpha and raised almost €5B, led by Schwarz Gruppe (Lidl, Kaufland). It wants to win government contracts on both sides of the Atlantic.
EIB and Deutsche Bank (Luxembourg and Frankfurt, banking) launched a €560M partnership to finance European space businesses, to strengthen Europe's space sovereignty.
Blocks (Berlin, cloud cost management) hit €25M in annualised revenue seven months after launching. [careers]
GetYourGuide (Berlin, travel experiences) posted Q3 2026 results: global GMV up 25% YoY on 12M+ experiences booked, with North America GMV up 34% YoY. [careers]
Numbers
Germany's seasonally adjusted unemployment fell to 2.95M in October, though demand for workers stayed weak, with 654k open roles reported.
Germany's foreign population grew by about 17k in September. Employment rate of internationals rose to 58.7% (+1.6pp year-on-year) while the unemployment rate fell to 14.5% (-0.7pp). [more]
📅 Events
This week we reviewed 96 upcoming events and handpicked 15. Check all 33 events on the link below.
Featured events
We have 3 spots left for 🚨 Lass uns Deutsch sprechen, our first Sprachcafe. Monday, 9th of November, 19:00–21:00 at The Social Hub Berlin on Alexanderstraße.
Build a CV that recruiters notice: Career expert Iulia Costea from ESMT Berlin's Career Development Center shares practical tips for making your CV stand out in 30 minutes. | Thu, 12/11 12:30 | Online
The Revenue Engine Hackathon: Berlin Edition brings together 15 high-potential startups for a full day at the HubSpot Tower, supported by 15 GTM experts and engineers. HubSpot for Startups, OpenAI, Clay and Lemlist are hosting. | Fri, 27/11 08:30 | HubSpot Office Berlin
Our picks
Women in Legal & AI: Breakfast Berlin | Lexroom | Fri, 06/11 09:00 | House of Small Wonder
Walking Club by URVI × LAP | Sun, 08/11 13:00 | LAP COFFEE
Kaffeeklatsch: Gamma in Berlin | Wed, 11/11 14:00 | café gentil
BLISS AI Speaker Series: Safety and Security of LLM Reasoning - Jonas Geiping | Tue, 17/11 19:00 | Technische Universität Berlin, Institut für Mathematik
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🧭 Career compass
Reddit: another Hannover-vs-Zurich salary debate — €90k fully remote in Hannover against CHF 120k hybrid in Zurich. As I've mentioned before when linking to these comparison threads, my Swiss friend has told me more than once that life for foreigners outside the biggest Swiss cities isn't easy — worth another look before checking your bank account.
The Hacker News Who is hiring thread for November is up. You will see a couple of good search tools directly on the link.
I liked this video a lot: on a hike, a software engineer talks about how AI killed his software career and what he's doing instead. He gives a very good perspective on the state of AI for developers (I loved the book analogy), and actually has an optimistic outlook. Let's go out and touch some grass.
I was surprised to see that the Binance $6.3B hack was so elaborate it even included fake job interviews. A crazy story, almost from a movie: one engineer downloaded a tampered dev tool via a search ad and the other was tricked into downloading a trojan horse while on an interview with the CEO of a fictional company.
😅 Memewhile
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