manic pixie dream bitch

Isis, Berlin via Copenhagen via Vienna. I have a really bad taste in almost everything but it's OK because my glasses are cool.

[losemybuttons]

A new mean thing that recruiters do: They call you on the phone to ask you “How do you think the interview went?”, and then you have to strike a perfect balance between showing you’re the perfect candidate and that you love this company, but also show self awareness that maybe you could’ve handled some aspects of the interview better in one sentence. And only then do they say that they’re moving on with other candidates.

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I'm the only person in my family that worked in a classic corporate job, so they never really knew what I was doing - they just knew I went to an office and that I was successful. When I was made redundant last year (with a long-ass transition phase to unemployment), they were all convinced that I was going to find a new job really quickly and that I shouldn't worry. I worried. And when my unemployment officially started, all of my worries came true:

The job market is worse than ever, I feel completely useless and don't know what to do with myself. I was very successful, but now I'm competing with hundreds of other formerly very successful people for mid roles at boring companies at half my former salary.

My family is trying to be helpful and their tips are all well-meaning and they're all entirely useless. My mum's "reapply to the job that rejected you after an interview" is as bad as my sister's "you need to manifest a new job". To avoid getting dumb tips, I tried talking to them less about how poorly I am doing and how draining the job search is, but these fuckers are now actively calling me because they know that when I go quiet, I am not doing so well, and they're worried about me. So on top of feeling like shit because all of my identity and self-worth were tied up in my job, I now also feel shit for snipping at my family that loves me.

[losemybuttons]

It's very rare that I miss university, but being in a journalism class the past few weeks, where Germany fell into a mass psychosis about a stranded whale, would've been fun.

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I just had a job interview at A Very Big Bank for A Very Big Title. I luckily did google how titles work in banking (it is ridiculous), otherwise I would’ve looked silly in the interview. I also did that exact job description and more at a big company, so at no point in the interview did I wonder if I could actually do the job.

I was more overwhelmed by the “banking” of it all. It’s five days in office, which will be an adjustment, but mostly I’m panicking about whether I can wear sneakers to the office.

[losemybuttons]

I’ve been unemployed for four months now, but the data science bootcamp kept me busy until mid March, so I’ve only been properly unemployed for five weeks. This is already way too long for my taste.

I know tons of people that really enjoy this time off the job, but I hate it so, so much. I’ve never been unemployed before, so I had no idea how much I’d hate it. I can find things to do, but not for 40 hours a week. I hate writing job applications, I hate searching for jobs, I hate that I am in a career where LinkedIn actually matters. The job market being terrible is not helping. It’s so terrible and I really want to work again.

It’s got me to the point that I am excited for a job interview at an insurance company that pays half my previous salary.

[losemybuttons]

I'm doing job applications again, very seriously. I'm going over some German startups and scale-ups right now, since there's a lot of momentum there at the moment.

Some of them do some AI shit and fall into this 996/cult category:

"We work from our office in Berlin. Everyone is here, because Everyone works together in person [...] Days start at 8:30. Lunch and dinner are together. We run, go to the gym, and take care of ourselves. Health is not separate from work here, it is part of how we work well."

... and some of them do some AI shit and fall into this category.

"[..] is a defence AI company. Our mission is to protect our democracies. We aim to achieve technological leadership, so that open societies can continue to make sovereign decisions and control their ethical standards."

And honestly? I'd rather build unmanned aerial supervision tools than join a cult.

[losemybuttons]

I just had a job interview that was about the usual, my experiences, my stakeholder management, my lack of knowledge about performance marketing, my SQL skills… but it was also, very obviously, about whether I am cool enough to work for this brand.

Fortunately, I am.

[losemybuttons]

For the first time in 20 years, I have to do the kind of maths that involves letters (including Greek) and requires me to know formulas.

I know, objectively, that I am a very analytical person, that I love working with data, that I’m OK at maths and that, if I sit down and study for a little bit, this isn’t that difficult to learn. However, as soon as our teacher started talking about factorials and lambda, some stupid high school maths trauma hit me, telling me that I’m really, really bad at maths and should just give up and flee from anything having to do with numbers.

It’s really frustrating, because high school was a long time ago and I thought I mostly got over all of that maths stuff. I’m now expending significant energy on fighting myself, instead of spending that energy on figuring out what the hell it means if there’s a circumflex over a letter.

[losemybuttons]

Every afternoon, we start class with an icebreaker: You say your opinion on the topic of the day and pick the next person to go. In week 1, we started with “What’s your favourite colour?”, in week 4 we’re at “What’s your perspective on determinism vs free will?”

Every afternoon, as soon as the icebreaker is announced, I think of my answer and I pick a next person to select in my head, making sure it’s somebody I haven’t recently picked, and I pick a backup answer in case mine doesn’t fit the mood of the group and I pick a backup person to select in case my original pick already went.

Every afternoon, there’s people in the class that very obviously don’t do all of this. Eg they pick a person on the spot, not keeping up with who’s turn it already was.

So every afternoon, I also get to ask myself if I am simply more organised, or if I’m just doing this to mask social anxiety.

[losemybuttons]

I'm doing a full-time data science bootcamp while I am unemployed. I have worked in analytics long enough and I'm definitely capable and learning a lot, but I do have a lot of catching up to do with the people in the group that are engineers or have a degree in applied mathematics, or already know a few programming languages.

It's a good feeling to have to work for it, once I do finally get a concept. I'm struggling a bit when I feel like I am slowing a group project down because I just take a little longer, but I am trying to remember that everybody has different skills and backgrounds and career aspirations and the maths whiz and the engineer were really happy to have somebody in the team that project managed the shit out of collaborating on a presentation.

[losemybuttons]

I just got contacted by a former colleague, who’s now doing some mindfulness/reflection/girlboss shit. We haven’t worked together in more than five years. I’ve loathed her since our last interaction, where she asked me if I could set up a meeting with her new direct report the next week (“to grow her network”), I said “Uh, I have surgery next week, so time is tight.” and she responded with “So this week, then?”

So I will not be booking a workshop with her.

[losemybuttons]

There's a massive power outage in the Southwest of Berlin. It started Saturday and it's been going on for days. I live in the South, so my area is luckily not impacted, but I'm relatively close to the powerless areas. The truly unnerving things are:

This is the second big power outage within a year

It's, once more, taking days to fix

The only official warning I got on my phone was this morning, with the information that the power is due to come back sometime today.

Reminds me that I should probably upgrade my disaster preparedness. It's mainly chickpeas and a few tealights right now.

[losemybuttons]

A crucial thing that the EU missed during Brexit negotiations was making it mandatory for any website shipping out of the UK to add a huge blinking banner that says "Shipping from the UK! Expect very long delays and unexpected customs charges you have to pay in cash upon receipt (No, the delivery person does not have change)!! Is this order really worth the hassle?"

[losemybuttons]

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It is ridiculous how many jobs in Vienna, that are usually advertised via some kind of recruiting company, end up being sports betting or tobacco. At least the crypto companies are straightforward about being crypto.

Berlin is still way better for jobs, but I'm excluding all the jobs where I'd be middle management in some type of gig economy, which is shrinking down the field by half.

[losemybuttons]

I met a few (also unemployed) former colleagues for lunch and we talked about the different experiences we’ve had with the unemployment agency. I’m not even officially unemployed yet (I’m on garden leave until the end of the year) and my case worker insisted that I make job search my no. 1 priority and find a new job while I am still at my old company - but they won’t support me in any way or finance furthering my tech skills. Somebody else was told to just chill with her family since nobody’s hiring in Q4 anyway (she was let go in June). My former direct report with 10 years of experience is sent to a mandatory 2 month “how to apply for jobs” seminar. My French teammate got the recommendation “move to France”. Somebody else was told that they would get financing for all classes except for those with AI in the name.

We all have similar qualifications, live in the sane system, in the same city. It makes no sense.

[losemybuttons]

After a month of a semi serious job search, it’s time to put my fake Christian middle name back into my CV, so my name is less scary and people scroll down to the languages section to see that, yes, I am a native German speaker indeed.