The Amazon tech duo joining Winklevoss crypto firm amid layoffs
At the end of last month, a number of Amazon employees were released from the company following layoffs announced earlier in the year. For multiple senior employees (who haven't been confirmed as layoffs or voluntary leavers) a popular destination seems to be crypto... specifically, the Winkelvoss Twins' crypto exchange, Gemini.
In New York, Homin Kwark joins as a software engineering manager. He spent five years at Amazon, starting as a level one engineer and most recently being a level three engineering manager for Amazon Smile, a division that Amazon is shutting down.
Elsewhere, in Seattle, software development manager Siddhant Bhushan left Amazon and joined Gemini as an associate director. Bhushan was in charge of the Amazon shopping cart team for two and a half years and spent over five years before that at consultancy firm Deloitte Digital.
It seems the Amazon contingent within the fintech community is supporting their peers as they make the move. Bhushan thanked Gemini's APAC CEO, Pravjit Tiwana and Eric Nielsen, CTO of B2B infrastructure firm Jolt for helping introduce him to "the vision and vibe" of crypto. Both previously held management positions at Amazon.
Engineers at Amazon's cloud business, AWS are the latest to face layoffs. Gemini seem open to taking them in too; in February, AWS engineer Ganzorig Zorig joined as a Senior software engineer.
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