Before a hiring freeze brought its eye-popping expansion to a screeching halt, Coinbase went shopping at Amazon: for employees.
The e-commerce giant was the top source of new hires for Coinbase in the first five months of this year, unseating Google from the No. 1 spot and accounting for 11% of the people joining the crypto firm through May. (By comparison, over the same period last year 3% of Coinbase’s hires hailed from Amazon.)
The hiring data detail Coinbase’s voracious appetite for engineering and other talent. Coinbase has said it hired around 1,200 people from the beginning of the year to early May. Amazon has long been a source for companies looking to load up on tech workers, and the company’s sinking stock price has likely made it easier for Coinbase to pick people off. Other big tech firms like Uber and Microsoft, as well as traditional financial firms like Wells Fargo and J.P. Morgan, round out the top 10 sources of talent.
But the recruiting landscape is lurching yet again thanks to the onset of the latest crypto winter—with layoffs at Gemini and other crypto firms in recent days only adding to the woe. Some employees could be regretting their decision to jump to crypto firms. Mike Adler, a managing partner at recruiting firm AC Lion who works with crypto companies, told The Information he expects a reversal soon that will see workers return to more-traditional industries in droves. “It’s going to happen,” he said.