This tech company is offering laid-off talent US$10,000 to “refrain from getting a job”

Music streaming service SoundCloud recently closed its offices in San Francisco and London, laying off 40% of its staff in the process. After the news broke, the SoundCloud community released a Google Doc with the names and contact details of the 173 affected employees in the hopes of helping them with their job search.

While impressed with this form of support, the president of file sharing service WeTransfer had a slightly different idea. In a letter to the newly redundant talent, Damian Bradfield made them an offer.

"US$10,000 to start something."

In return for the money, WeTransfer wants... nothing. Except for them to refrain from getting a job. "We don’t want equity or thanks. We’d just like to ensure good talent doesn’t go to waste," Bradfield writes in his letter.

The thinking behind the unusual offer is that it would be "sacrilegious" for all this talent specialised in music, technology, and innovation to end up working a "regular" job. Bradfield argues the industry must keep innovating and for that they need challengers like the talent groomed and trained by SoundCloud.

A document entitled "please don’t get a job" sets out the criteria and answers some frequently asked questions regarding the offer. It emphasises the money is a gift, not a loan, and further explains the rationale behind the initiative. "Our role is to enable the transfer of creative ideas," it states, adding that the goal is "to see if we can help push forward ideas that might otherwise never be seen."

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Photo / WeTransfer