Author: Anna

Since July I am officially off the unemployment benefits, paying my own health insurance (yikes) and making my own revenue (double yikes).  The last two months I’ve been networking in real life and building my Laid Off & Fabulous community like crazy, this is why this newsletter is about the visibility skill.  The one I…

I am always very loud about the importance of mental health. About how, when you are burned out, it is the real deal and should be taken seriously. I always support people when they share about this. And now, when I am self-employed, I noticed a terrible thing. When I see someone showing signs of…

How magically “integration” is understood as “assimilation” in Germany beats me every time. Having lived and built my life in Berlin as a Russian immigrant, I catch that stench crawling into conversations. It’s the superiority. A colleague casually asking if I could recommend friends… because she needed a cleanerWhen locals assume the German way is…

That question stuck with me. I wish I took it more seriously when I was being laid off. I still don’t have an answer for myself, and I hope that it is what I’m doing, but deep down I know that… well, that I don’t know what I don’t know. And it got me thinking…

The caution and the “let’s give it one more quarter”  and too many hiring rounds because no one wants to take responsibility for the wrong hire. It all clicks the second the money is yours. Maybe there is a camp that turn employees demanding value from employees into employees that think about the value they…

Funny thing, I consider this layoff the second most important event in my life, right after leaving Novosibirsk for Berlin in 2009. This experience helped me build my first strong offering of my own, helping internationals negotiate higher severance and not get screwed over by the immigration and unemployment systems in Germany. Now my community,…

How magically “integration” is understood as “assimilation” in Germany beats me every time. Having lived and built my life in Berlin as a Russian immigrant, I catch that stench crawling into conversations. It’s the superiority. A colleague casually asking if I could recommend friends… because she needed a cleanerWhen locals assume the German way is…

Let’s talk money. It’s day 341 of me receiving unemployment benefits. In Germany, that’s 60% of your average previous salary – around €2,100 in my case. On top of that, since I took the leap, the state is paying me €300 extra, a subsidy that is supposedly helping me transition into full-time self-employment when revenue…

Let’s talk moneeey. I’ll tell you because I have tons of this insider information:  If you are signing a Mutual Termination Agreement, a good severance package starts with…  Faktor 1,5 and higher, As “signing bonus” 3+ months of extra pay, keeping your notice period.  You keep all the perks while still employed, plus some mental…

That’s the slippery slope into becoming resentful and adding zero value to the company. Your manager will know. Your teammates will know. And don’t get me started on all the ways you’re not moving forward because you’re making decisions out of fear. Situations like the one in this meme happen more often than you’d think.…