I am a foreigner who has been working as a developer or manager in the software sector in Germany for around 10 years. For a couple of years I have been trying to move towards self-employment, with some ups and downs, but I am making progress on a project together with my wife. Last year I had the chance to switch jobs and move elsewhere so I naturally targeted Berlin. I would like to keep working in a high-paying job while funding the startup that I work on in my free time. I noticed a few things:
There are a quite a few startup jobs, but they are low end, low paying. Many pay even less than what I started on 10 years ago. They are looking for those starting their first job I think. I get the feeling Berlin startups get a lot less funding that other startups.
Even the non-startup jobs that require more experience seem to pay a lot less, and even with the slightly cheaper rent than other cities, I couldn't find any attractive options.
The official work experience I have on my CV is more enterprisy stuff like .NET and lots of stuff startups care less about like Scrum, Kanban, management in general and agile software development. I do have experience with things like Ruby, Python and JavaScript, but even startup employers were only interested in what was on my CV.
Not complaining or anything, just trying to help get a feel on what I found while looking there last year.
I found a good job near Frankfurt, and who knows, maybe I will end up in Berlin later, but I feel I might not need to. Frankfurt has a startup scene (and a rich financial sector). So does Cologne where I used to live.