A couple of days ago, I was asked at a gathering of startups for how long I do work for my current company. I said that for around two months, I heard the following observation: 'Quite a lot of time for the startup style'.
On a sidenote: I am living in Berlin, Germany, a country where you need a lot of effort and inner strength if you want to achieve professional success. In the last three years, I've heard a lot of stories from people that arrived in Germany (capitalist version) in their late 30s and it took them around 30 years to be considered: fluent German speakers, mature enough and relevant enough for being a successful story. Most of them did not change their job in the last two decades, as the stability of the workplace is part of the profile of a stable career.
However, it seems that the startups - not all of them created by German entrepreneurs - are here to claim a different narrative. It is not the time spent at the same desk that matters, but your achievements, and if you are smart enough to get the best professional and financial exposure in your late 20s, you can retire honorably and tour the world in your early 40s. A job interview do not start with an investigation about what your aims for the next 5 years are, but rather with a question about where do you see yourself in the next 30 days.
I am not one of those highly enthusted persons that will pledge the cause of the startups and I am decent enough to consider the financial risks of changing the job every 3 months. But, on the other hand, I felt very often that it is a big distance between the corporate mentalities here and the reality and such disparities will discourage innovation and creativity and on the medium and long term will endanger development. The startup booms could be understood somehow as the solution that the young generation of entrepreneurs living in Germany found for catching up with the latest trends in technology and creative thinking while enjoying the stability of the German economy.
On the long term, I am optimistic and wish I am one of those startup minds too.
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