Why I Turned Down Jobs in Big Tech To Work at Gemini

*Gemini software engineer Oliver Tipton published this declaration on his after going through Gemini’s summer intern program. Gemini later hired Tipton after he played an instrumental role building the Invest tab for the Gemini Wallet. *

Twelve months ago, all I could think about was landing a FAANG offer. When I finally got it, I decided to work in crypto, for Gemini, instead. And it’s the best decision I’ve ever made. Allow me to take you back a few years. I did not grow up coding. My first exposure came during freshman year in college when I enrolled in an Intro to Python course.

I was hooked immediately, not because of the career prospects, but because solving coding problems scratched an itch in my brain I did not know I had. Around the same time, I began experimenting with DeFi and NFT flipping. It was nothing advanced, just late nights on Discord, farming roles, and light degen activity. Still, those early experiments planted a seed.

While a junior in college, I decided to fully commit. I dove into Leetcode practice, lined up coffee chats, and polished my resume. Over the course of four months, I sent out more than 250 applications, but didn’t land a single interview. Eventually, I made it to a final round interview at Amazon. I studied hard, but failed a Leetcode medium and did not get an offer. Not landing a summer SWE internship felt like a death sentence and I accepted an internship at a data company instead.

In the weeks that followed, I joined a Discord community run by a Bitcoin maxi I had followed for years. The entry fee was steep, but I saw it as a bet on myself. Crypto had already been tugging at my curiosity since late high school. I did not fully understand the technology then, but the culture and the energy around it had always interested me. Before I joined the Discord community, the founder told me something that stayed with me.

During a gold rush, you want to be the one providing the shovels, not the one doing the digging.” I decided that in the approaching year, I would take more risks and bet on myself. Joining the Discord community felt like the first time I had the opportunity to do it. That night I searched for "smart contract development” and what I found led me to the double life I have lived for the past fifteen months.

After a summer spent diving into crypto when I wasn’t interning at the data company, I co-founded @DavidsonBC_club with @0xjaxkson and @liamcoughlin628, and launched personal crypto projects. I reached a point where I felt at home in the space. Still, my official goal did not change: I wanted a big tech offer. I kept practicing Leetcode while exploring DeFi in my free time, dabbling in memecoins, degening, and eventually building a wallet-tracking tool called @whale_spear in late December. That project was a turning point: it was the first time I built something purely for myself– something I genuinely wanted to use.

That tool caught the attention of someone in the Discord community who offered me a part-time role as a software engineer at his startup. Suddenly, I had relevant work experience, and the big tech interviews started rolling in. Around that time, I also received an invitation from @Evanzsoloman to attend an all-inclusive week at Ethereum Denver hosted by @eigen_labs (thanks @Mustafaxyz9). It would be the largest Web3 student hackathon to date. I had never done a hackathon, but I knew this was the opportunity of a lifetime. I had just received an offer for a software engineer job in Charlotte, but I turned it down and booked a flight to the hackathon instead.

Four weeks later, I boarded a plane to Denver with my friend Jackson Sichelstiel for my first hackathon. It was one of the most amazing weeks of my life. I met incredible people and even won the @Uniswap track. More than the prize, I realized how happy I was spending every day surrounded by people who wanted to talk about crypto. That was the turning point: I decided I would do whatever it took to work in crypto full-time.

Even as I made that decision, I was still interviewing with banks and tech firms, including Amazon, while working at the startup and sending countless Twitter messages to crypto founders. But breaking into crypto full-time was not easy, either. Most companies wanted developers with years of experience.

Going All In With Gemini’s Intern Program

I saw that @Gemini was hiring interns, and I knew this was my chance. I reached out to @grace_reginato, completed the OA, passed the interviews, and received an offer. On the very same day, a well-known bank extended a full-time data science role to me.

It was my first major test of conviction. The bank offered safety and doors into data and AI, but I believed deeply that our financial system was failing and that the future lay in seamless, self-custodied assets. For most of my life I have made the "smart" and "balanced" choice. When I joined that crypto Discord, I promised myself I would take more risks and bet on myself. That promise did not end here.

I accepted the @Gemini internship instead of the full-time role and started looking for an apartment in New York City.

Right before graduation, I was on the beach with friends celebrating our last hurrah when my phone buzzed with an invitation to a final round Amazon interview. I had completely forgotten that I did their OA months earlier. I laughed, told my friends, and decided to go for it. Two weeks later, I sat for a three-and-a-half-hour interview without any Leetcode prep. I thought it went fine, moved into my new apartment, and started my first day at Gemini.

That night, exhausted, I opened my phone to see the subject line: “Congratulations on your offer to Amazon.” And yet, a sinking feeling came over me. At Amazon, I would become a nameless face doing work I was not passionate about. I had chased an offer like Amazon for more than 15 months, but I knew deep down what was best for me. I wanted to be an artisan, not a factory worker (@mikelxc). I turned down Amazon.

At Gemini, even as an intern, I was in the Onchain division, building DeFi products and experimenting with the future of finance. I helped build Gemini Wallet’s Invest feature, allowing customers to earn rewards off their USDC. All the while, I got to watch my colleague and fellow intern Jackson Sichelstiel build out the Swaps tool, a feature integral to any trusted onchain wallet.

Later that summer, @Gemini extended me a full-time offer as an onchain developer in the New York office, and I have never been happier. Every day I get to speak the language I am passionate about, research market trends, and work alongside people who share the same conviction. The Hack-A-Thon we held to celebrate the Gemini Wallet Launch was legendary.

More than anything, this journey has been about betting on myself. Taking risks. Watching them pay off. Turning down two SWE offers and a data science role mattered because it forced me to trust my ability to earn a return offer and to stand by my convictions. As banks and large institutions launch stablecoins, roll out their own L1s, and move onchain, I do not have to sit on the sidelines wondering "what if." I bet my time and my belief that this system will continue to evolve, and now I get to be part of that shift.

Some will say the safe road with Amazon would have pushed my career further. They will say crypto is vaporware. The beauty of life, though, is that your story is entirely your own. So bet on yourself. Bet on crypto.

Go Where Dollars Won’t!

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