Berlin Life begins
As I was wrapping up my life in London, Delivery Hero reached out to me for a job opportunity. I had never heard of that company before so I attended their interview with a very not so serious attitude, answering their questions with whatever that came to my mind, blatantly and bluntly. I didn't fancy my chances and started working for a start up remotely. Much to my surprize, Delivery hero came up with an offer. I was offered the role of a Senior Engineer with the Austrian wing of their business. It came with a significant hike from my London salary not including bonus or stocks. Now that was an offer I couldn’t refuse. I negotiated and increased it a bit more. That and also because I was a fan of the Diemannschaft ever since I won a bet with a friend in school during the 2002 ⚽️ World Cup, I decided to move to Deutschland 🇩🇪. It was the first time I was "headhunted".
Moving countries is a great way to accelerate one's net worth and mine increased by almost 100%. But in reality, mine only normalised because the previous employer paid much less than the market rate. It was the first time I felt like I might have a bit of room to play with. The time between exiting from the previous company and joining the next one is the most exciting time for a software professional. It’s the time he is least in stress. I used this time to just hone my skills and preparing for the move.
When I say 'I moved to Berlin', it's an over simplification. Moving countries requires going through a ton of formalities. It starts with clearing numerous rounds of interviews. In the Software Engineering world, mathematically speaking, if there are 5 rounds in an interview, it takes 32 attempts to clear once. So getting that job with a 1/32 probability was incredible in itself. Then came the bureaucracy. As if proving myself wasn't enough, the the move itself was even harder. The amount of documentation I had to provide to get the National Visa started with getting a new copy of my Birth certificate from the village I was born, Police verification certificate to prove my clean record to Degree certificate to prove my qualifications to getting them verified and translated (ZAB approval), Insurance, Zav Zusage etc, was just endless. And that's only to get into Germany with a National visa. I had to then convert that into an EU Bleu Karte to be able to work. With an EU Bleu Karte, one could get residency in 33 months with B1 level of German proficiency or in 21 months with C1.
So after about 3 months in India and multiple trips to Bangalore to get the visa, on the November of 2019, I moved to Berlin. Countries tend to throw around this word - "talent" a lot. Talent is just a glorified term for Labour. If it was only about talent, they wouldn't have created all these hurdles.