2026-08-02 14:00:22
In 2017, after I finished the third year of my Computer Science studies, I decided to do an internship in Europe. So while I was applying for the Erasmus Scholarship, I also started looking for internships. In the end I got the scholarship, which helped a lot with the visa process, and I also found an internship at a company in Hamburg.
I had never been outside of Turkey before. So I had also never really talked to people from other countries. What I knew about Germans came mostly from the Turkish people who moved to Germany in the 60s for work. Those people came back to Turkey almost every summer and told us about their life there. Most of what they said was the same as what you can read on the internet, the stereotypical German.
People who don't laugh, who are cold and unfriendly, who always follow the rules, who speak a language that sounds too harsh, and so on. And of course, someone always brings up the Nazis.
Apart from the people I talked to in the interviews, my first real contact was my German flatmate. Before I arrived he showed me the room on Skype and we agreed on it. When I landed in Hamburg, he picked me up from the airport. That was a great start, and during my three months there we chatted in the kitchen almost every evening for half an hour.
I had a lot of questions for him and he always answered them properly. On the weekends he picked up his girlfriend and they either stayed home or went rowing. Their relationship looked very healthy to me. She was studying medicine, so sometimes she was working at her desk on a Saturday while my flatmate played Witcher 3 right next to her. I never heard them argue about anything.
Near the end of my internship he told me that he and his girlfriend were going to Africa, so I would be alone in the flat for a week. When I asked him what I should do with the keys, he just said to drop them in the mailbox. That much trust after such a short time really surprised me.
We had a last dinner together and I told him things were going well at the company and there was a chance I could come back to Hamburg.
I was lucky with my flatmate and I was also lucky at work. I had a great team. They taught me new things, gave me responsibilities the other summer interns didn't get, and included me in all the team events. The offsite we had outside the city is something I still remember today. And I was getting all of this while earning minimum wage.
I was really surprised by how friendly everyone was. We weren't just working, we were having fun. Everything I had heard about Germans until that point was gone. It was the best summer of my life.
My lead was happy with my work and offered me a job right away. I could work as a freelancer from Turkey while finishing my studies, and if they were happy with my performance I would get a full-time contract. That is what happened.
In April 2018 I got my contract, even before I finished my studies. The next month something nice happened. My German flatmate emailed me and asked when I was coming back, because he already had a room for me for the summer. The company was going to give me a place to stay, but I couldn't say no to him. Right after my last exam, before I even had my diploma, I moved to Hamburg at the end of June and started working full time with the same team, living with the same flatmate.
On my first day there were candies and balloons on my desk. Everybody was happy to see me again. One colleague who knew my interest in Apple gave me a German flag pin he got at WWDC18. He said he tried to swap it for a Turkish flag but couldn't manage it. I was already happy with the gift, because it meant he was thinking about me while he was in California.
When you start living in Germany you have to register your address. When I went to the public office, the clerk told me I had already lived in Hamburg before. I said I had done a summer internship a year earlier. He just said: Welcome back!
That was the moment I felt like I was coming home, not moving to a new country.
My first months were mostly about finding a flat and figuring out how things work here. Since my German wasn't good enough, my colleagues came with me to flat viewings after work. When I had a problem with my electricity provider, a colleague came along and did all the talking. When I moved to a different place a year later, a German colleague rented a van and helped me carry everything.
At the time, the company was one of the biggest internet companies here, with around 2.000 people. Sometimes I saw the C-level in the kitchen getting their own coffee or even washing their own glasses. They had assistants, but the assistants helped with work instead of acting like servants. We also had a CFO who rode a very old bike to the office.
Whenever we had a team event or an offsite, the organisers made sure they knew everyone's dietary needs. Vegan, vegetarian, halal, no alcohol, allergies. So everyone would have something to eat and drink.
When I was doing a good job, my lead kept telling me to take vacation instead of working more. When I was sick, he told me to stay home until I felt better. I didn't even need a doctor's note. It took me a while to notice this was not only a work thing. You get on a bus or a train here and nobody checks your ticket. I wasn't used to this level of trust.
Across from our office there was an Italian restaurant where we went for pizza sometimes. The pizzas were very tasty and huge, and it was the only place that sold half a pizza. At lunch I saw people in suits eating there, and right at the next table people from the construction site nearby in their work clothes eating the same pizza. Nobody looked at the other table and nobody thought it was worth noticing except me. That is the part that stayed with me. It was completely normal, and it was normal because a man who spent his morning on a building site can afford an Italian lunch and eat it like everyone else.
I noticed the same thing in the rich districts of Hamburg. You can walk into one and not feel like you don't belong, and the prices in the shops are not that different from anywhere else in the city. Sometimes they are exactly the same. The more I saw of that, the more I wanted to stay. I believe in social democracy, and this is a country that calls itself one and mostly behaves like it.
It didn't take long for me to move up at work. I didn't feel any discrimination, even though people say Germans prefer Germans when it comes to promotions. There were already a lot of people with a migration background at the top. When I ran as a candidate in the works council election, I got the most votes of anyone, even though there were many Germans running and only around 25% of the company were immigrants like me.
You see the same thing outside of companies. Cem Özdemir, whose parents came from Turkey, has been the prime minister of Baden-Württemberg since May. Sinan Selen, who was born in Istanbul, runs the office for the protection of the constitution.
Being in the works council gave me more contact with the C-level. Sometimes I found myself arguing with the CTO or the CEO, and later at a company party we would have a beer together and talk about something else. That is when I understood how flat the management is here. I saw the difference later when I worked for an American company, where they made sure you knew you were lower on the ladder.
I met hundreds of Germans at that company and they were always super friendly. I say this because years later I still see many of my old colleagues at different events, and most of my friends today are people I used to work with. A lot of immigrants complain that it is hard to become friends with Germans, but that wasn't my experience.
I should be honest about one thing here. I landed softly. I came into a big international company where everyone spoke English, in a city like Hamburg, with a salary that let me pick where I live. I have worked with other German companies since then, mostly smaller ones, so what I write here is not only about that one place. But the start was much easier for me than it is for most people. A lot of them arrive with none of that, and the country they meet is not the same one I met. Everything I write here is my experience, not a report on how it works for everyone.
The language is part of that. Every story I told above happened in English. The team, the flatmate, the works council, the arguments with the CEO, all of it. Once I decided I was going to stay here for a long time, I started taking German classes, and after the citizenship law changed I put much more effort into it. So the German came from the decision to stay. It was not the thing that made me stay.
I never really tried to integrate. It just happened that the way I think about life turned out to be similar to how people here think.
Most people complain about the rules in Germany, but I like them. It means someone, or a group of people, sat down and thought about that specific thing and decided on a standard for everyone. When you have to do something, you don't feel lost, because you can just look it up. You don't have to find someone who knows.
Rules also make normal days easier. Something simple like waiting at a red light even when there are no cars takes away the work of deciding whether to cross. And if everyone does it, you don't have to worry about someone suddenly stepping into the street. Or the fire safety rule that makes exit doors in public buildings open outwards. You never have to think about pull or push.
There are also unwritten rules, like being on time. For me the logical thing has always been to aim for 15 minutes before the agreed time, so if something happens on the way I'm still fine. After going on dates with a lot of Germans, I realised they do the same thing. So instead of me arriving early and waiting 15 minutes, we just meet 15 minutes earlier.
My favourite one is Ruhezeit, the quiet time between 10PM and 6AM, plus Sundays and public holidays. My sleep is very important to me and I'm a light sleeper, so this rule really helps me. Sometimes I had neighbours who had parties during those hours, and I didn't hesitate to complain (with Lärmprotokoll) to my landlord. Many Germans have told me I'm more German than many Germans. It is probably because of examples like this one.
The one time a rule was pointed at me instead of working for me was my first application for permanent residence. I had just left my first company and I was between jobs, and that was enough to get it rejected. That was when I learned what a sustainable livelihood means to the German authorities. It doesn't mean the money you have in your account. It means a permanent contract with the probation time already behind you. I had savings and it didn't count for anything.
It was an emotional day. But after I calmed down I could see their logic. A bank balance can be gone in a year and a signed contract that already survived six months says something a number can't. It was the same system I like for every other reason, just this time I was on the wrong side of it.
The longer I lived here, the more I saw myself spending the rest of my life here. That made me want to read about the country. I'm a heavy reader and I track every book, so here are the ones I read about Germany:
Apart from the books, I also watched a lot of documentaries, especially about the Nazi era.
Like most people, I didn't know that Germany wasn't one country until the 19th century. It was made of small kingdoms, city states and so on. That is why there are so many kinds of bread, beer and sausage, why some parts have different public holidays, different accents and even a different way of living.
The German Genius surprised me the most. It is about 1.000 pages about Germans who contributed to humanity in different fields, and I didn't know how many things in our daily life exist thanks to them. Some of them had to escape the country because of the Nazis and reached their full potential somewhere else, in countries like the US and the UK. The books also helped me understand how Germany built an educated middle class, how workers' rights and social reforms happened, and where the rule about no shopping on Sundays comes from.
What stayed with me is that this is probably the only country in the western world that faced its own history properly, admitted the worst things it did, and built a lot of its identity around not repeating them. You feel that here in small ways, not only in museums. In January 2024, after it came out that far right politicians had talked about deporting people who already hold a German passport, 50.000 to 80.000 people filled the streets of my city in one afternoon.
In eight years I have not had a single case of racism. I know that isn't true for everyone, and I know the far right keeps growing.
I don't think most of those votes are about hating foreigners. Some people believe the story they get every day, that the country is broken and that immigrants are the problem. You find that story almost everywhere. The rest are angry that certain problems here have not been solved for years by the existing parties, so they look for an alternative.
For me, Germans are people who give trust before it is earned. People who are friendly without being fake about it. People who make sure everyone is included, down to what is on the table. People who care about someone they will never meet. People who know exactly what happened here and don't look away from it.
That is why I decided to become one of them.
The chance came when the traffic light coalition, which I think was the most progressive government this country has had in decades, changed the citizenship rules and brought the waiting time down to five years. I was eligible, so I applied.
People seem to think a German passport is handed out easily now. It isn't. You have to prove you paid into the social system for at least five years. You have to pass the citizenship test. You need German at B1 level. You need a sustainable livelihood while your application is running. And most importantly, you have to accept the democratic values of this country.
For me the process itself was smooth. I applied online by uploading a pile of PDFs. A week later I got a letter saying my application had arrived, with a few papers to sign, scan and upload back. Then the waiting started. In total it took around 14 months to get the email saying my application was successful and that I could come and collect my Einbürgerungsurkunde.
I picked it up this week, at an appointment that only took 15 minutes. I am German now.
I believe I have contributed something to this society in these eight years and I will keep doing it. And I will keep complaining about everything that needs to be better. Because that is what real Germans do.
2026-05-28 14:00:00
I released my first app in April 2023. Since then, I published 10 more apps. Before I started my app development journey, I had so many questions about having an app business, especially when it comes to taxes in Germany.
Over the years, I’ve successfully submitted my tax returns without any issues. Thanks to a blog post in German, I had a starting point. So I thought it would be nice to share how I file my taxes, similar to that blog post, so other app developers can do it in a similar way.
I know that many people would like to develop apps and sell them on the App Store, especially with the rise of agentic coding, but they are hesitant because they are scared of the Finanzamt and don’t want to deal with the bureaucracy or pay hundreds of euros for a tax advisor. This is especially true if you need one who understands how the App Store works and can also speak English.
I have to mention that I’m not a tax advisor. The way I describe below is how I submit my tax returns, but your case could be different, or I might be doing something wrong. So I don’t take any responsibility for any issues this post might cause. I just want to give you a starting point so you can figure out what you need to do.
Before going into the details, I should mention that I have an Einzelunternehmen. If you don’t have one, this should be the first thing you set up if you’re not planning to form a company. You have to apply for an Einzelunternehmen in your city, and also for a new tax ID. If you’re living in Hamburg, you can do that online through the form here. For getting a tax ID, you can use the form here on Elster or use the English form here.
I should also mention that the revenue from the App Store is my only revenue. So if you have different revenue sources like freelancing, you might need to fill in your forms differently.
I use the AusweisApp to log in to Elster. Elster (short for Elektronische Steuererklärung) is the official online platform from the German tax authorities where you submit your tax returns. It is completely free to use.
So let’s get started.
If you don’t count your normal income tax form (if you also work full-time for example), there are three forms you have to submit for every calendar year. These are:
The first one is the main tax form that shows how much you earned from your app business and how much you spent. The second form is for sales tax. This is quite simple because if you only have an app business like I do and receive money directly from Apple or Google, and since they handle the sales tax, you basically declare your sales tax as zero. The third one is for trade tax. You use the total profit from the first form here. Depending on your state and your profit, you might need to pay trade tax on top of income tax. This one is also quite straightforward.
On the first step (Allgemeine Angaben) of the EÜR form, you fill in your personal details like first name, last name, and address. The important part is the 4th field. Here you enter the start date of your business and the end of the year. Your business start date is normally written on the letter you receive from the city after you apply for Einzelunternehmen. The 6th field is the type of your activity, which is software development for trade. The 7th field might be different if you also work as a freelancer. The 8th field is the type of income, which is commercial. The 9th field is the business owner, in our case the person filling the tax form. The 10th and 11th fields are not relevant if you didn’t close your business during the calendar year.
After entering the details about your business, it is time to enter the numbers. For that, you start with the third step (Betriebseinnahmen). Since Apple pays the sales tax, as an app developer you only receive the payment after sales tax. So you have to pick the field that fits our case, which is “Betriebseinnahmen, die umsatzsteuerfrei oder nicht umsatzsteuerbar sind oder nach §12 Abs. 3 UStG dem ermäßigten Steuersatz von 0 % unterliegen oder für die der Leistungsempfänger die Umsatzsteuer nach § 13b UStG schuldet”.
Since I only develop apps for the App Store, I enter the money I received from Apple during the calendar year. The important thing here is that you don’t enter how much sales or proceeds you had in, let’s say 2026, the number you see on App Store Connect. You enter the amount of money you actually received from Apple during the calendar year. For Apple, this is mostly the November and December payments from the previous year, and the payments from January to November for the declared calendar year. This could be different depending on when you receive the payment, but you always declare the money that landed in your bank account during the calendar year.
If you also develop apps for Google, following the same logic, you can add a second line item in this field.
Once you are done with the income part, you can move to the next step (Betriebsausgaben) for the business expenses.
On this section, there are multiple steps depending on the expense types:
Once you are done with the expenses, you have to fill in two more fields in section seven (Entnahmen und Einlagen i. S. d. § 4 Abs. 4a EStG), but in most cases they won’t be relevant. These fields tell the Finanzamt how much money you added to your business account or how much you withdrew. This could be relevant if you manage a separate business account and spend money from it for personal expenses, or if you earn interest from your business bank account.
In this section, you find the fields “Entnahmen einschließlich Sach-, Leistungs- und Nutzungsentnahmen” and “Einlagen einschließlich Sach-, Leistungs- und Nutzungseinlagen”, then enter a line item with “0”.
That’s it for the EÜR form. If you have different kinds of expenses, you might need to find the relevant fields. Before completing this form, make sure you write down the number in section five (Ermittlung des Gewinns), under the “Steuerpflichtiger Gewinn/Verlust” title, in the field “Steuerpflichtiger Gewinn/Verlust”. This number is your taxable profit or loss. You will need it for the trade tax form.
As I mentioned before, since Apple handles the sales tax, you don’t need to declare any sales tax. After filling in the similar “Allgemeine Angaben” in the first section, under the “Art der Besteuerung” title, you select “vereinbarten Entgelten (§ 16 Absatz 1 Satz 1 UStG)” for the “Die Steuer wurde berechnet anhand:” field. When you buy something from the App Store, the VAT is already shown on the invoice. The VAT is due when the invoice is issued, which is why you select this option.
Then, you jump to section twelve (K. Berechnung der zu entrichtenden Umsatzsteuer), scroll down to “Steuer”, and fill in the fields “Manuelle Eingabe der verbleibenden Umsatzsteuer / des verbleibenden Überschusses” and “Vorauszahlungssoll 2025 (einschließlich Sondervorauszahlung)” with “0”. Here you are saying that there is no remaining VAT and there was no advance VAT payment.
That’s it for the sales tax form.
On this form, after filling in the first section “Allgemeine Angaben”, you move to the second section “Rechtsform / Art der Tätigkeit”. Here I select the first option “Der Gewerbebetrieb wird als Einzelunternehmen betrieben.”, since I have an Einzelunternehmen.
Then, you jump to the fifth section (Angaben zum Gewerbebetrieb), under “Angaben zur Betriebsstätte”, and select “Nein” for the first three fields. These are related to the location of your business. If you make any changes, you might need to select a different option. Since you selected “Nein”, you also fill in the fields “Wenn nein: Postleitzahl der einzigen Betriebsstätte” and “Ort der einzigen Betriebsstätte” with the zip code and city of your business.
After you are done with the fifth section, you visit the sixth section (Gewinn aus Gewerbebetrieb). Here, you fill in the “Gewinn aus Gewerbebetrieb vor Anwendung des § 7 Satz 4 GewStG (ohne Beträge laut Zeilen 46 und 100 bis 102)” field with the net profit or loss number you wrote down from the EÜR form.
That’s it for the trade tax form.
I hope you find this blog post useful. I should mention that the content of the forms changes almost every year, so the things I showed might be in a different place if you are reading this in a different year.
As I said in the beginning, I’m not a tax advisor. I just wanted to share how I file my tax returns on Elster for my app business. The reason I’m sharing this is that I don’t want people to be discouraged from starting a business. I believe the Finanzamt would think the same. People should not be afraid of the Finanzamt. By declaring your taxes, you are already showing that you are honest. If you make a mistake, the Finanzamt will probably let you know and won’t punish you for it.
As long as you declare the right numbers for your income and expenses and don’t try to inflate your expenses to pay less tax, I don’t think you would be in trouble with the Finanzamt. Especially if you’re reading this post and not making millions of euros per year, because in that case you would probably already be working with a tax advisor and the numbers would also matter more to the Finanzamt. :)
If you’re reading this post, you are most likely developing apps for Apple platforms. If you would like to get a better overview of your sales, keyword rankings, and customer reviews, take a look at my app, Peek.
2026-05-19 16:20:00
As you may know, German is a very flexible language. It lets you create your own words. So I wanted to make my own small contribution and came up with this word: Einbürgerungsantragsjubiläum.
It means the anniversary of a citizenship application.
If you want to get German citizenship under the current law, you usually need to:
After that, you are eligible to apply for German citizenship.
I have been living in Germany for almost 8 years. During this time, I have been working as a Software Developer, and I still do. Germany would probably describe me as a highly skilled immigrant. I already have permanent residency. Last year, after passing the B1 German test, I applied for citizenship.
According to the Hamburg Immigration Office, the average processing time is 14 months. In Munich and Stuttgart, it is around 18 months. In Bremen, people have to wait around 28 months.
But this is only the average. I know some people who have been waiting for more than 3 years for their application to be processed.
I honestly do not know many other processes that take this long. I know there is a big discussion around citizenship, but as you can see from my case, people like me are also applying. You cannot receive government benefits and apply for citizenship. You have to prove that you have been working, paying into the pension system, and earning enough money to support yourself.
Germany needs skilled immigrants more than it often admits. Its pension system is already under pressure from an ageing population, and studies estimate that the country needs around 400.000 net immigrants per year just to keep the labour force stable. Making life harder for the people who already work here, pay taxes, and contribute to the pension system is not a smart strategy.
When Germany makes life harder for highly skilled immigrants, many of them start looking at other countries. I know many people who are planning to leave Germany because of the amount of bureaucracy they have to deal with. I also know people who do not choose Germany in the first place for the same reason.
Personally, I do not have a big problem with waiting, because I do not plan to leave Germany anytime soon. At the same time, I feel like I have to talk about this problem. Germany should be more attractive for highly skilled immigrants. People like me want to contribute, work, pay taxes, and build a life here. The system should make that easier, not harder.
2026-04-04 15:00:00
What would you do with the hours you spend reading the news every day? I found out this year. In the first three months of 2026, I finished 19 books, which is almost as many as I read in the whole of 2025. Turns out, staying informed is expensive.
Last year, I was writing a blog post after every quarter covering books, movies, TV shows and games. This year, since I read so many books, I decided to just write about the books I liked after each quarter. You are reading the first one of this series.
I enjoy reading about history, especially when it opens my eyes on a very specific topic. Against the Grain by James C. Scott was that kind of book. Most people think of agriculture as a natural step forward in human history and as the foundation of how human society developed. But when you read this book, you see that agriculture was not something people really wanted to do. It required too much work and led to the birth of states, which meant paying taxes and working in other people’s fields. You even learn that the walls built around those early states were not only to protect people from enemies, but also to keep the people living nearby inside so they would work the fields and pay their taxes.
Another thing I liked about this book was how it challenges the common idea of barbarians. When we think of barbarians today, we only think of negative things. But those people were actually the real rebels who did not want to live under the rule of those early states or spend their days working on farms. They simply wanted freedom, without being forced to work and pay taxes. Since history was written by the people living inside those states, we never got to hear the barbarian side of the story. We still see them as the enemy.
If you are interested in history, this one is hard to put down. You will also never look at a loaf of bread the same way again.
When I first heard about this book, I was surprised that most people around me had already read it and I had somehow missed it. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl is about the author’s own experience in the concentration camps. I have watched many documentaries about the Second World War and I know about the horrible things that happened during that time, but what I read in this book was on a completely different level. The author is a psychologist, so he does not just write about his feelings but also about his observations as a psychologist.
The second part of the book focuses on logotherapy, which is a school of psychotherapy that sees the search for meaning as the central driving force in human life. That part resonated with me a lot, because finding meaning in my life is something I think about often.
It is very short but emotionally quite heavy. If there is one book on this list that I think everyone should read at some point in their life, it is this one.
Since I have been living in Germany for a long time, I wanted to learn more about German history and ended up with Blood and Iron by Katja Hoyer. History books can be quite boring, but this one was very well written. The book mostly focuses on Otto von Bismarck and his role in German unification. I knew a little about him since there is a very tall monument of him in Hamburg. I always wondered what made him worthy of that kind of honour, and now I know why.
After covering German unification, the book shifts to the political environment and social life, and how the empire slowly built a nation. You even discover things like the origin of why all shops are closed on Sunday in Germany. A lot of the things I observe here started to make more sense to me after reading this book.
At the end, you also see the beginning of the First World War and how things developed over time, including all the lives sacrificed by the Kaiser while he enjoyed a peaceful life even after the war ended. It left me with a strange feeling, knowing that some of the patterns from that era are not as distant as we like to think.
Last year, I noticed I was not reading much fiction, so I wanted to change that. Based on a recommendation from a friend, I started On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle. The book is about a woman who is stuck living the same day, the 17th of November, over and over again. It is a fascinating story, but what I liked most about it is that because she lives the same day every day, she starts to notice every small detail of life. From the movement of clouds to the sounds her husband makes at home.
While reading this series, I noticed that I also started to appreciate the small details in my own daily life, from birds to the behaviour of people around me. That shift in attention felt like an unexpected gift from a book about someone trapped in time. I have already read the first three books of this seven book series and the fourth one is coming out very soon.
I heard a lot of positive things about this book from friends, so I gave it a try and could not stop reading it. Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen focuses on a scenario where North Korea fires a nuclear missile at Washington, and what unfolds right after it is detected. The author interviewed many people to get things as accurate as possible, so while reading the book you are both horrified and surprised by what would actually happen if a single nuclear missile were fired today.
What stayed with me after finishing it was not the scale of the destruction, but how little time anyone would have to make decisions, and how many of those decisions are already made in advance by automated systems. I hope the scenario in this book never happens, but when I look at what is going on in the world, I always feel there is a small chance it could.
A friend pointed out that I had never read anything by Ursula K. Le Guin, so I decided to start with one of her most well known books, The Dispossessed. It is about a scientist who travels to a sister world after making a scientific breakthrough. That world has a completely different political system from his own. I would not be wrong in saying that while his world leans more toward communism, the world he visits leans more toward capitalism. But unlike most books that would take one side, this one perfectly shows the flaws of both systems, as well as the role of women in each world.
I already ordered another book by Le Guin before I even finished this one. That should tell you enough.
If you are confused, like I am, about the growing inequality in the world and the rise of far right parties, this book might help. I first heard about The Tyranny of Merit by Michael J. Sandel from Olaf Scholz, the former chancellor of Germany, in an interview. The book focuses on meritocracy and how it divides people into two groups: the educated and the non-educated. Over time, politicians started praising meritocracy and pushing the idea that everyone should study, not just for a bachelor’s degree but all the way to a PhD. Of course, not everyone can do that, and the ones who did started to form their own class, separate from those without higher education, and began to control many aspects of life. On top of that, they do everything they can to make sure their children have the same advantages.
Even though the book mostly focuses on the US, you can see the same patterns in European countries and in Germany too. It covers the last four decades and shows how the makeup of political parties changed. In the past, you would see workers in parties like the Social Democrats or the Labour Party. Today, you mostly see people with PhDs. This creates a big problem: since only a small group of highly educated people are running things, those without higher education feel left behind. People with PhDs often cannot relate to the problems of everyone else, so they fail to come up with solutions that work for most people. In the end, those who feel ignored look for alternatives, not because they believe those other parties can fix their problems, but because they have lost hope in the established ones.
I especially recommend this one if you already consider yourself highly educated. It is a little uncomfortable in the best possible way.
2026-01-28 16:00:00
If I have to pick my favourite German word, I would probably pick “neugierig” because it describes me very well. It means curious, but that is not the literal meaning. Like many German words, it comes from two parts: neu and gierig. Neu means new, and gierig means greedy. So the literal idea behind neugierig is being greedy for new things. That fits me well.
I really enjoy learning new things. That is why I read a lot, watch documentaries, and explore different topics. I am greedy for new information. This also includes what is happening around the world.
For years, I followed the news to keep an eye on what was happening in my country, in the world, and in the tech industry. I curated a list of sources that matched my taste, from international newspapers to YouTube channels, Reddit, and tech-focused websites. Every day, I checked these sources through their websites or my RSS reader to stay up to date.
At the end of last year, I had some time to reflect on my habits. I thought about what makes me happy, what makes me stressed, and how the things I do every day contribute to my goals.
When I looked at the time I spent reading the news and how I felt afterward, I realised it was not helping me at all. Most of the time, I felt more stressed than informed. I also noticed that almost every source focuses heavily on negative stories, simply because those attract more attention and clicks.
When it comes to world news, I started to see the same patterns repeating. A lot of headlines about political figures, conflicts far away, and problems I have no control over. I asked myself how much of this actually affects my daily life, and I could not come up with a good answer. Many things are happening in the world, but they rarely change anything in my day-to-day routine. That made me question why I was following them so closely.
The same applies to tech news. Most of it revolves around big personalities, constant AI updates, startups getting acquired, people becoming rich, hardware I will probably never buy, and rumours about products that may never be released. In most cases, none of this has any real impact on my life. New technologies are usually easy to learn when they become relevant, and it is hard to know which ones will still matter in a few years.
After thinking about whether I really need to follow the news, I decided that I do not. This does not mean I do not care about the world or the tech industry. I am just not interested in following daily updates that do not add much value to my life.
One thing I am still interested in is what is happening in my city. For that, I recently discovered a newsletter from Die Zeit called Elbvertiefung. Every weekday at 6 AM, they send a short newsletter about what happened in Hamburg, and sometimes they also recommend a book or a new restaurant or cafe. I start my day by reading it. Since it is in German, it also helps me improve my language skills.
For the rest of the news, I am considering subscribing to a magazine that covers important events in Germany, the EU, or the world every few months. This kind of format filters out short-term noise and fear-driven stories. These publications usually make money by selling the magazine rather than ads, so they tend to focus more on quality. (If you have any recommendations, feel free to reach out.)
At the beginning of this year, I decided to stop following the news. As a result, I started reading more. Last year, I finished 20 books. This year, just in January, I finished 7 books. I still satisfy my curiosity and learn new things, but I just changed the medium. And I feel much better because of it.
2026-01-22 16:00:00
When I first encountered the internet and began spending hours online, the people I interacted with were mostly nerds in the best sense of the word. They had niche interests, deep curiosity, and a genuine willingness to help others who shared their passions. Technology felt like a playground for people who enjoyed building things for fun, learning obsessively, and solving problems simply because they could.
As time passed, consumer tech products began to take off. Personal computers, the iPod, and later the iPhone didn’t just change daily life, they accelerated the entire tech industry. More people became interested in technology, often inspired by the same principles that guided its early pioneers: building things out of curiosity and nerdiness, and only then figuring out how to make enough money to keep going.
Eventually, the people building these products (whether software or hardware) started making serious money. Not necessarily because they were creating proportionally more value, but because their products reached a massive, non-technical audience. A small group of company owners suddenly found themselves extremely wealthy. With the rise of social media, they began to showcase their lifestyles: luxury homes, exotic travel, expensive hobbies. For people outside the industry, this was eye-opening. Tech no longer looked like a space for curious nerds, it looked like a fast track to wealth and status. This shift is something I’ve watched from the inside, not as an outsider looking for villains.
This realisation triggered a new wave of people entering the tech industry. Unfortunately, many of them lacked the curiosity and enthusiasm of the early builders. They weren’t interested in technology for its own sake or in improving people’s lives. They were primarily interested in money, rather than in the technology itself. This was the breaking point for me. I increasingly encountered people who spoke confidently about technical topics without understanding even the fundamentals. They acted as if they were “changing the world,” imitating figures like Steve Jobs, but without the substance behind the performance. It became easy to identify them. Around that time, the term tech bro emerged to describe this new archetype: confident, performative, and often detached from any real technical depth.
Meanwhile, the early entrants to the industry became unimaginably rich. Figures like Sergey Brin, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates reached levels of wealth that are difficult for ordinary people to comprehend. Like many early builders, they started as nerds but extreme wealth eventually translated into unchecked power. Elon Musk was perhaps the first to fully realize this. Instead of limiting himself to technical subjects like rockets or electric cars, he began publicly weighing in on social and political issues.
He was clearly under the brain-rotting drug (“Their financial success all too often convinces them that they’re uniquely brilliant, able to instantly master any subject, without any need to consult people who have actually worked hard to understand the issues.”), but neither the public nor the new wave of tech workers recognized it. Instead, they elevated him to a messianic figure. Much of what he said was treated as unquestionable truth by his followers. Once other tech leaders saw Musk’s influence and loyal following, they followed the same path. This wasn’t just about personalities. Venture capital incentives, social media amplification, and winner-take-all markets rewarded loud confidence over competence, and provocation over substance. Ideas they once avoided expressing became central to their public personas. They moved beyond their campuses, directly engaging with governments and political discourse.
At the same time, their personal lives took darker turns. Many divorced the partners who had supported them early on. Some publicly pursued much younger partners; others were accused of harassing female employees, and in a few cases, far worse behavior later came to light. The motivation of the new tech elite shifted from building things, to making money, to exerting influence, to indulging every excess made possible by power and wealth.
We went from criticising Steve Jobs for rejecting his daughter to celebrating Elon Musk’s ever-growing number of children. Today, opening social media often means seeing startup and mid-sized tech CEOs and executives eagerly praising, defending, or desperately seeking the attention of Elon Musk. It has become very difficult to work in tech without encountering leadership that is openly racist, sexist, or aligned with white supremacist ideas.
At some point, the industry stopped being nerdy, curious, and hopeful and became something deeply disgusting. It didn’t rot by accident. It rotted because we rewarded the wrong things and continue to do so.