How is life for non white people? I'm from latin-america.
It's really hard at least in Berlin.
Is Berlin the new home for tech start-up business? [video]
101–110 of 173 posts
Re: Is Berlin the new home for tech start-up business? [video]
#102Top 5 reasons why you should move to Berlin, now: 1. Lowest livings costs with highest quality of living. Stay in gorgeous, perfectly renovated apartments in pre-WWII residential buildings with high ceilings, right in the middle of the center and pay a fraction of costs of any other capital (even cheaper than any Eastern European capital). No need for a car—Berlin has one of the densest subway nets and wide streets m…
"In addition, Germany has an amazing social health care system including health, unemployment and pension (when working as an employee)." I am sorry but this is simply wrong. There are social health and pension systems but both of them suck and are horrible broken. If you are under 30 and not nearly dead you should do everything possible to get out of those and take care of your self with private insurances.
Many people in private insurance claim that it is at least equally broken, with some saying it is worse. And some of those people I'm speaking about are MDs themselves.
It is broken by German / first-worlds standards, of course, with people not having access to something similar laughing about these claims, if it was remotely funny.
Re: Is Berlin the new home for tech start-up business? [video]
#103Berlin is a FANTASTIC city to bootstrap your project ...
reasons: 1. cheap cost of living, 2. availability of relatively well paid contract work, 3. A very supportive startup / creative community who are willing to share info and resources, 4. A very smart and creative demographic, 5. wonderful bars, clubs, and restaurants, 6. German people are actually a decent bunch :)
disadvantages: 1. over-strict regulations in dealing with Banking and Regulatory bodies (whatever you do, do NOT sign up for a postbank a/c), 2. Less than ideal weather.
Overall a win I think, which is why I continue to call Berlin my home.
Re: Is Berlin the new home for tech start-up business? [video]
#104I'm an NZ expat who has lived in Berlin for the last few years. While Berlin is cool, let me present a caveat... I've enjoyed the music scene and cheap rent, but have experienced major culture shock. It is a very intense place, full of contradiction, i.e. extremely open-minded in some areas and absurdly conservate in others. Berlin alternatively challenges and reaffirms one's various values. Sometimes it seems like t…
To be fair, that would also be a near-perfect expat description of California.
Re: Is Berlin the new home for tech start-up business? [video]
#105On the 'fake it,till you make it' path,Berlin seems to be right in the 'fake it' part.You guys write about low costs of living,however there are cheaper places in Eastern Europe with better tech talent availability overall.You mention the nightlife and a couple of the clubs are indeed world class,but I'd doubt it that you go there more than 5 times a year.The internet in Germany is borderline third world quality,in B…
>The women are better than in the UK,but far from the best looking in the world. Woo, casual misogyny \o/ >The internet in Germany is borderline third world quality Germany, the completely authentic sub-Saharan information drought experience... >but I'd doubt it that you go there more than 5 times a year. Culture's about more than clubbing. >however there are cheaper places in Eastern Europe with better tech talent a…
Germany, the completely authentic sub-Saharan information drought experience...
What's your sarcasm supposed to imply here? If the internet's not great, the internet's not great. Having recently gotten out of doing research in distributed systems I actually know the average German DSL rates. It's mixed. I'm sure that you would be on the low end if you lived in one of the older buildings with poor wiring.
Culture's about more than clubbing.
He didn't mention anything about culture, he was talking about nightlife. And if he cares mostly about clubbing, that's perfectly fine.
1 City vs. half a continent. Good comparison.
One city in Germany vs. a bunch of cities in Eastern Europe. It may be more useful if he gave an actual city to compare it with, like Budapest, but it's definitely a valid comparison.
Re: Is Berlin the new home for tech start-up business? [video]
#106Home for start-up business? Yes. For tech start-ups? I don't think so. I have yet to meet one engineer-driven tech start-up from Berlin. Most founders I met and know are some business guys with oh-so-clever ideas looking for just the right CTO guy to make their plan reality. And most German developers I know also never thought about working for a start-up. They happily flock to every large German company you may know…
Same here in Argentina, the startup community is almost engineer-free (almost, there are exceptions) but yeah it's kinda difficult to find engineers because most here don't want to work at a startup that might last less than a year, so they go to big and established companies instead.
Re: Is Berlin the new home for tech start-up business? [video]
#107Berlin is a FANTASTIC city to bootstrap your project ... reasons: 1. cheap cost of living, 2. availability of relatively well paid contract work, 3. A very supportive startup / creative community who are willing to share info and resources, 4. A very smart and creative demographic, 5. wonderful bars, clubs, and restaurants, 6. German people are actually a decent bunch :) disadvantages: 1. over-strict regulations in d…
> wonderful bars, clubs
They don't close. They. Do. Not. Close. As a nocturnal developer I could go out to a club, get back to my hostel at 2, write code for 2 hours and then go out again. Bliss.
Re: Is Berlin the new home for tech start-up business? [video]
#108Top 5 reasons why you should move to Berlin, now: 1. Lowest livings costs with highest quality of living. Stay in gorgeous, perfectly renovated apartments in pre-WWII residential buildings with high ceilings, right in the middle of the center and pay a fraction of costs of any other capital (even cheaper than any Eastern European capital). No need for a car—Berlin has one of the densest subway nets and wide streets m…
"(even cheaper than any Eastern European capital)" That may be true if you exclude Warsaw, Budapest, Prague, Bratislava, Bucharest, Sofia, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Belgrade, Sarajevo, Skopje, Riga, Talinn, Vilnius, Kiev, Bratislava and a few more: http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings.jsp Otherwise I agree with your 5 points. And Berlin is cheap in comparison with much of Western Europe.
I don't really know where they get their data and the overall picture might well be right but e.g. the rent index within Germany is quite dubious: In their list, Frankfurt and Cologne have a lower rent index than Berlin, whereas I think the map on immobilienscout24 looks a lot more believable[1]
I don't have original or better data but let's carefully say that from the anecdotes that reach me it would be useful to study what rent you would have to pay realistically (for an apartment and for office space) as a non-local coming to a given city. Specifically, as a start-up founder or engineer, you would most likely not want to live in the cheapest neighborhood, independent of if it's New York, Sofia, Warsaw, or Berlin.
tl;dr Most eastern European capitols might be a lot cheaper than Berlin but the linked data should not be trusted blindly.
Re: Is Berlin the new home for tech start-up business? [video]
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
genuine question: if it's so great and the capital of a rich country, why is it so cheap? (e.g. what you mentioned about apartments in the city center.)
Anyone spent a winter in Berlin? It's incredibly cold. Traveling around the city on bicycle, train etc is great during the pleasant summer months but it's literally painful during the winter.
Wikipedia lists the average lows during the winter as around freezing, which is not really that cold… Comparable to (actually slighter warm than) NYC winters, for example.
Re: Is Berlin the new home for tech start-up business? [video]
#110Top 5 reasons why you should move to Berlin, now: 1. Lowest livings costs with highest quality of living. Stay in gorgeous, perfectly renovated apartments in pre-WWII residential buildings with high ceilings, right in the middle of the center and pay a fraction of costs of any other capital (even cheaper than any Eastern European capital). No need for a car—Berlin has one of the densest subway nets and wide streets m…
Be aware, however, that if you're black you can get killed in Berlin. Lots of Neo-Nazis in the city.
source?