Hello everyone,
our first Sprachcafe (Lass uns Deutsch sprechen) last Monday was a massive success. We will now tweak the concept and hopefully get the second one through the door before 2027, so stay tuned if you are in Berlin. If you'd like to join our book club where we read German novels, check this.
Now let's dig in...
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📌 Pinned
I somehow lost the LinkedIn post that made me think this week: it was a comparison of two identical CVs, one written by a human and the other generated with AI. The point of the recruiter was that they can't stand reading AI-generated slop anymore.
I only run a small newsletter and have already received around 10-20 pitches to partner up with AI-based solutions that will help you match your CV to the job description and then more or less automatically apply. Think job board but with AI-applications built in. I even linked to one of the solutions myself. In fact, I was even selling some prompts myself a while ago! (Those were really good!)
But the thing is that AI-based CV generation is now creating thousands of average CVs, all tailored for the job descriptions. If you ask AI to write, it will produce the best average result. For your CV, this means it will completely blend with the surroundings and become completely useless. Fortunately I don't need to look for a job at the moment, but if I were, I would do the following:
prepare two or three clearly human-written CVs, that read a bit special, so that the reader will immediately know it wasn't written by AI (but not typos or other cheap tricks)
record short intro videos and send them to the hiring managers and recruiters
have a 2h brainstorming session with AI on how to stand out as an applicant and what to try (also see some cold-mail ideas in the Compass section)
I know it takes effort, but maybe its worth a try. Here is a good short note on AI writing by Judith Dada. Why would a CV be any different than a blog post? Nobody wants to read AI crap.
How did you write your last CV?
👀 3 job highlights of the week
Peec AI — Head of Data Science — Berlin
🌍 Community board
I can really recommend Workish in Neukölln, a coworking space and makerspace by the canal in Neukölln. They have private offices available for teams of 2–12, with garden-side rooms, meeting rooms and phone booths. The team is amazing, and they are also one of 30 coworking spaces nominated for the Deutscher Coworkingpreis 2026.
EWOR Fellowship applications are open until 30 November, offering tech founders up to €500k and mentorship from founders of Adjust, ProGlove and SumUp.
Last week I asked you how the automotive crisis touches your working life: 71% work elsewhere, 15% work in automotive, 8% have someone close in the industry, 5% work for a supplier, and 1% work for companies mainly selling to carmakers.
💸 Funded in Germany
Sennder | Berlin | Digital road freight forwarding platform | €228M equity and debt | Careers.
Agent F | Berlin | AI agents for finance automation | $4M Pre-seed | Careers.
SRTD Biotech | Jülich | Precision mRNA therapeutics | €31.5M Seed | Careers.
Vaeridion | Munich | Electric regional aircraft | €30M Series A + selected for €94.5M grant, agreement expected in 2027 | Careers.
SPARETECH | Stuttgart | AI spare parts inventory management | $20M Series B | Careers.
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📡 Signals
Pay & conditions
Metal and electrical workers' pay talks remain deadlocked: IG Metall wants 5% over 12 months, while employers offer 1.3% from July 2028. Warning strikes are now being prepared.
Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil plans to replace married employees' tax classes III and V with an automatic factor method based on the couple's income split. The proposal would change monthly withholding, particularly for lower-earning partners. [more]
Charité (Berlin, healthcare) agreed higher pay and new shift allowances for doctors, averting their strike. Separately, 98% of participating Verdi members backed an indefinite nurses' strike over staffing protections; further negotiations and first strikes are planned.
The gender pay gap among top executives narrowed from €121k to €26k in 2025, as women's earnings and representation increased. [more]
Hiring & expanding
Defence employers are expanding around Munich: Hensoldt (Taufkirchen, defence electronics) plans to grow from 10.6k to 14k employees within three years, while Onodrim Industries (Netherlands, defence technology) announced a Munich office and already lists roles there. Munich startups attracted about 40% of European defence-tech investment in 2026. [Hensoldt careers] · [Onodrim careers]
Cutting & closing
Vodafone (UK, telecoms) plans to cut or relocate about 2.3k German roles over two years, around 19% of its workforce here, while automating more administrative work with AI.
Very real AI impact: Zalando (Berlin, e-commerce) closed both Berlin photo studios last year. More than 340 roles were cut, although some staff moved internally. [more]
Bosch (Gerlingen, engineering) plans another 750 job cuts in Abstatt by the end of 2029, due to weak demand, industry restructuring and competition from Asian suppliers. [more]
Peek & Cloppenburg (Düsseldorf, fashion retail) must leave its Düsseldorf flagship store by October 2027; its Berlin and Frankfurt flagship properties are also set to go to rival Inditex.
Company health & ownership
Delivery Hero (Berlin, food delivery) has passed a takeover milestone: Uber secured 66.56% of its shares. Uber has pledged to keep the headquarters in Berlin until at least 2029, maintain the Berlin workforce and invest up to €2B in Germany. [more]
KNDS (Netherlands, defence manufacturing) could become half-owned by Germany: the government reportedly agreed to buy the German owner families' 50% stake in the tank maker. The agreement isn't closed yet.
Siemens (Munich, industrial technology) agreed to acquire embedded-software debugging specialist Lauterbach, expanding its semiconductor design and verification business. [careers]
Two Berlin tech companies are getting US owners: Ratepay (Berlin, payments) is being sold by Nexi to Affirm, with regulatory approval expected in the first half of 2027; WorkMotion (Berlin, HR software) is being acquired by Upwork subsidiary Lifted.
Commerzbank (Frankfurt, banking) could come under UniCredit's control by early 2027. The Italian bank expects the remaining approvals by late November and says a merger with HypoVereinsbank could happen in 2028, earlier than previously planned. [more]
Volkswagen (Wolfsburg, autos) cancelled its planned large-casting centre in Wolfsburg.
AI data centres hype is also helping two industrial employers: Siemens Energy (Munich, energy technology) more than doubled its annual operating result before special items to €5.49B, with Gamesa returning to quarterly profit; Infineon (Neubiberg, semiconductors) increased annual net profit 49% to €1.51B and expects data-centre revenue to reach €4B in 2027. [SE careers] · [Infineon careers]
Uniper (Düsseldorf, energy) almost doubled its adjusted net profit over the first nine months and confirmed its raised full-year forecast of €550–650M.
Langdock (Berlin, AI software) reported €60M in annual recurring revenue, up from the €50M covered here in October.
For those interested in Anthropic IPO, here is an article from the God of Valuation, Aswath Damodaran. And be sure, he wrote all of it. A legend.
Numbers
Germany's part-time share reached a record 40.3% in Q2 2026 as full-time employment fell and jobs shifted towards health, care and education. Meanwhile, rising unemployment-benefit spending means the Federal Employment Agency needs another €5B federal loan, on top of the €4B already budgeted for this year.
📅 Events
This week we reviewed 102 upcoming events and handpicked 17.
Featured events
What could an MBA change for your career in Germany? At ESMT Berlin's Open House, explore career switches, the move from specialist to manager, and paths into leadership while meeting students and alumni. | Sat, 14/11 10:00 | ESMT Berlin
Our picks
In conversation with Sir Michael Moritz | Fri, 13/11 16:00 | The Delta
GTM Week Berlin Opening: The Rise of the GTM Era | Mon, 16/11 18:00 | Merantix AI Campus
Sales for Busy Business Owners: Win More Customers Without a Sales Team | Tue, 17/11 12:00 | Online Event
Build x Agents: AI Agents for Small & Medium Businesses | Wed, 18/11 19:00 | Berlin
How to deal with imposter syndrome - A Workshop for Startup Operators & Founders | Tue, 24/11 19:00 | Berlin
Pssst! A Silent Shared Table Dinner | Thu, 26/11 18:30 | C-SPACE Berlin
🧦 Can you buy me an Americano & a half a month?
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🧭 Career compass
If you'd like to get inspired on a collection of great cold emails that led to jobs, check this post by next play. Some oldies but goldies are in the mix, but also some AI stink.
Related, because now everyone knows about a cool way to cold email, we are in a situation where people just randomly plug some fact into the email/message, devaluing the whole concept. Here is the format: "Hi X, saw your [piece of content] about [thing you said]. [Compliment.] I’m curious, [open-ended question]?" More by Josh Strange.
Reddit: here is an interesting discussion on learning German (does it make sense vs. it maybe doesn't), where a struggling Machine Learning engineer asked for advice because he is struggling to find a position after more than 500 applications. If you have any good tips, drop a message; I will include it in the next newsletter.
Reddit: someone asked if 31 is too old to go back to school to become a radiologist. And I loved some of the comments, for example: “would you like to be X when you are Y years old?” or "This is the youngest you're ever going to be. If one day you look back and think about what your life would've been like had you ..." So true. If you are thinking of a pivot, go for it.
A couple of months ago, a lot of companies were all about tokenmaxxing, encouraging employees to push with AI as much as possible. This story is now reversing: here is an example of a memo from Amazon. In short: lines of code and number of pull requests is a shitty metric.
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