Working as a freelancer with a couple of startups, I would like to share that they are really, really struggling with their employees ( dev. teams ).
IMHO, they have unrealistic budget & business expectations for most of the developers. Because of that employees' burn-rate is really high and they switch jobs very often ( 6-8 months ).
New talent comes form mostly eastern Europe, but since it's obvious after 2 weeks working and a couple of tech events that you might find a better job ( maybe salary! ), they usually don't stay loyal to their first employer and quit within 6-8 months.
Now I see another flow of startups hiring people from countries that need VISA to work here. Which again sounds like another way to keep the employee ( will have more difficulties fixing papers if he/she quits ), without improving your business strategy. Anyway don't have any insights about this case, since I don't have a lot of friends like that in my network.
Also not every startup is look-a-like, but almost no startup will give you individual salary based on your experience level ( they usually will determine the paycheck by the position that you take +/- 10% ).
Nevertheless for a freelancer, Berlin is an awesome city to work in!
Berlin is in the rare position of being large, cheap and having good institutions. Usually you only get two of those. Moving further east has its own set of problems. The baltics have good institutions (particularly Estonia), but Tallinn has 500k residents. Germany ranks 15th in the Ease of Doing Business ranking, but Poland ranks 25th (it's on a strong upward trend, to its credit). To give you an idea of how many intra-EU differences there are regarding business: Greece ranks below Jamaica and far below Kazakhstan in the Ease of Doing Business ranking.
IMHO, they have unrealistic budget & business expectations for most of the developers. Because of that employees' burn-rate is really high and they switch jobs very often ( 6-8 months ).
New talent comes form mostly eastern Europe, but since it's obvious after 2 weeks working and a couple of tech events that you might find a better job ( maybe salary! ), they usually don't stay loyal to their first employer and quit within 6-8 months.
Now I see another flow of startups hiring people from countries that need VISA to work here. Which again sounds like another way to keep the employee ( will have more difficulties fixing papers if he/she quits ), without improving your business strategy. Anyway don't have any insights about this case, since I don't have a lot of friends like that in my network.
Also not every startup is look-a-like, but almost no startup will give you individual salary based on your experience level ( they usually will determine the paycheck by the position that you take +/- 10% ).
Nevertheless for a freelancer, Berlin is an awesome city to work in!