It seems to me Berlin's startup ecosystem is heavily optimized for very young people. It's awesome the immigration process is so easy, but the minimum wage requirement for IT jobs is just 38,688 EUR. Lots of companies sponsoring visas, but with wages rarely above 50k EUR, even with a relatively low cost of living, they're only attracting young singles willing to sacrifice in order to get a blue card. And from the job pages videos I've seen (like Zalando), they explicitly state they're looking for young talent, and of course the ping-pong table propaganda (love that term!) is pretty standard.
Zalando is a bad example. First of all, it's not a startup, and certainly not part of any startup scene. Secondly, it's not exactly the best place to work at, same goes with any Rocket Internet company for that matter.
I do agree that a lot of young startups are more friendly to young people. But the tech scene in general is okay. I don't think it's difficult to find work as a senior here. I get 90k+ offers on a regular basis for attractive positions and interesting technologies to work on.
