Recently I was conducting one of my first interviews, showcasing my new company and covering what it means to work in a startup. It struck me as a little surreal. This was a real “fake it til you make it” moment as I had just started in my first startup the month before. Now I am dozens of interviews down, and starting to get a feel for Berlin’s startup scene (even in the times of a pandemic).

The city once lovingly called “Arm, aber sexy” (“poor but sexy) is no longer giving doe eyes to just penniless bohemians. Big business has discovered the German capitol and its vibrant startup sector has earned it the new nickname of “Silicon Allee”. It vies with London for the title of largest startup hub in Europe with new businesses opening – and closing – every day. A wave of young international immigrants are coming to Berlin, still happy to hit the clubs, but cutting the party short on Sunday so they can get up for their day job on Monday. There is a casualness – particularly for the traditional German landscape – where people are encouraged to be themselves and have some fun (see a slide from my welcome pack below).

“No fun in Germany” PHOTO: Erin Porter

But many people still have questions about startups in Berlin. Is it only for the young? What positions are being hired for? What salary and benefits should you expect? I will do my best to cover what to expect working at a startups in Berlin.

What to Know About Working for a Berlin Startup

Startup seekers will find a rich landscape from which to choose in Berlin. There is Fintech (finance), Medtech (medical), Edtech (education), Foodtech… you get the idea. Some of these one-time startups are already Berlin legend like shopping giant Zalando, or N26 for banking. Many more are still small-scale, like under five people small. The average size of a Berlin startup is 12.3 employees. Intense competition and reliance on outside funding mean business collapse is common with many promising startups out within their first two years. Working in a startup is not for the faint of heart.

Positions commonly in demand are developers, data analysis, data science, and web design, although marketing, sales, customer service, recruitment, and finance are still necessary to keep the business flowing. Berlin’s salaries remain bargain basement compared to European capitol competitors, but cost of living is still low enough (even with the housing crisis) to mean that anything over 30,000 is livable, and over 50,000 is lux. Considering salaries for a full-stack developer average 70-90,000, Berlin startup employees can live like kings. On top of that, add benefits like gym membership, transport costs, education stipend, flexible hours, equity, and bonuses.

Where finding a career in Berlin as an English-speaker was once a thing of folly, the default language of Berlin startups is English. That doesn’t mean everyone is a native English speaker. On a recent company chat about the unexpected snowfall last Friday, we asked everyone to share their language’s word for snow.

• Niyebe
• sneeuw!
• la neige
• nieve
• تلج
• Neve
• Manchu
• Schnee
• 雪 
• sneg
• बर्फ
• sneachta
• сняг
• Kar
• Barf (The word in Farsi was obviously a favorite)
  

It was a fascinating example of the many different places represented in one company. Plus, it is not just an English-language environment these startups offer, many offer visa support and relocation. That said, Berlin startups are still no utopia. They are typically white male dominated, particularly in the role of founders and software engineers/developers. Most companies are chipping away at this with diversity hiring policies, but it will be slow to change.

In addition to the easier bar of entry for non-Germans, there is a high degree of opportunity to leave an impact in a startup. Where you often feel like a cog in the machine at a large company, in a startup every person’s effort is integral to its success. I have never worked with so many people who don’t treat it as just a job, but are actively looking for projects that interest them. This really matters. If you are only a company of 10 and 1 person isn’t up to the role – everyone in that company is going to know about it. Or if you have an all-star player that excels at their work, supports the rest of the team, and updates and improves policies – everyone is going to feel that as well. One person can really be the tipping point of success or failure. Add to this how many people have moved to a new city and are searching for a network, the all-encompassing nature of working in a startup can lead to a “Drinking the Kool-Aid” scenario where everyone needs to be one happy family – like it or not.

In the best case scenarios, startup employees have the required skill sets and are given the freedom to vastly improve the business. There is no clocking in or micro-management. You can stop to play ping-pong or call it a half day if you “aren’t in the mood”. In a good startup, there is a trust there. Your success is measured directly by your output. Are you able to accomplish what you set out to do? This independence can be frightening. On the other side of this, the expectations can be far too demanding. I interviewed at one startup where the founder laughed when telling me they often work a 50-hour work week. I don’t think he was kidding.

The collaborative requirements of startup success often has company’s touting their “flat hierarchy”. The first time I saw that, I had to look it up.

A flat organization refers to an organization structure with few or no levels of management between management and staff level employees. The flat organization supervises employees less while promoting their increased involvement in the decision-making process.

In theory, this allows for newbies to converse with founders and each of their opinions to hold equal weight. It’s a nice idea. A business without boundaries between employees. However, I have heard from friends that this is rarely the case in reality. In a flat hierarchy there is still division and seniority, you just can’t see it.

Luckily, there are several places a startup employee can share their grievances. I have already noticed the promotion of the “company inbox” where employees can complain anonymously in several meetings. There are also frequent feedback sessions between employees and managers which allow for concrete benchmarks to be established, and critique to be given. In a healthy startup this means there is a chance to address problems and grow as a staff and as a company. This can also feel like one big therapy session to me. How Berlin.

SWAG PHOTO: Erin Porter

Working in a Berlin Startup in the Time of Corona

Many of the aforementioned perks of working at a Berlin startup are more difficult to achieve since the pandemic. Elaborate team building events? Decadent parties? Even after-work beers are a no-go.

The transformation to work-from-home was sudden last March, but by now most startups are offering some kind of home office set-up. Before I started, I received a delivery of macbook, second monitor, trackpad and keyboard, and very fancy office chair. Along with that came the branded swag, including the oh-so-Berlin black beanie. This is a definite perk when you are expected to be performing office-quality work at home (especially as KiTas and school have been on-and-off suspended parts of the last year).

This is even available for my new foreign colleagues working elsewhere in the world. A silver lining of the pandemic is that my team realized that work-from-home works so well, we can be remote-friendly moving forward. Remote hiring increases diversity, allows the company to access a wider talent pool, and is effective in a pandemic where people can’t join the team in Berlin.

As far as events, that is a challenge. The fun work environment some startups have traded on versus adequate pay, or just in lieu of having a personal life, are difficult to provide when everyone is trapped at home indefinitely. On my first day, my manager arranged a lunch delivery for my new team so we could all get to know each other. She also had a book delivered with a note that was a nice touch. Company-wide, there have been short presentations where people have told a bit about themselves, or offered insight into something they found interesting ranging from pet adoption to book reviews to how to conduct academic research with babies. There was also a tea ceremony where the people team had tea delivered to employees’ homes and then everyone was guided through a tasting. It is an effort, but I can attest that these measures have made a bunch of strangers now feel like colleagues I can call upon.

So, anyone have some pandemic-safe summer party ideas? (Thumbs pressed.) Or do you have a startup horror story? I would love to hear it.