A former Meta employee has shared that she voluntarily asked to be included in the company’s recent , saying her personal ambitions no longer aligned with the company’s direction.
Meta on Wednesday began a major round of layoffs affecting around 8,000 employees globally. The company said that the job cuts are part of a broader restructuring effort focused on improving efficiency, reducing costs and accelerating investments in .
Julie Bone, who worked as a content designer for in Los Angeles, wrote in a LinkedIn post that she left Meta after completing exactly 6 years at the company. “A personal update: I’m leaving Meta as part of today’s layoffs. In the interest of accuracy, I asked to be included,” she wrote.
Bone said the decision was not impulsive and had been on her mind for a long time. “For a long time now, Meta’s ambitions and my own were in different continents,” she wrote, adding that the timing felt right for her personal life and because she partly hoped that leaving voluntarily could help another employee keep their role.
The former Meta employee added that her request was honoured, though she jokingly questioned whether it had made any actual difference internally. “Was I already on the list and not a single spreadsheet cell was changed? Maybe!” she wrote.
In her post, Bone further reflected on the growing push toward AI skills inside Meta, saying “AI-first” had become an expectation across teams. She described learning to vibe-code to prototype ideas, fix codebase issues and automate repetitive weekly tasks using AI agents.
However, she also cautioned that AI upskilling alone would not protect workers from job insecurity. “It’s not technophobic to say that no amount of AI upskilling will protect workers without coordinated action,” she wrote.
Bone said she was leaving with “deep respect” for her colleagues and highlighted her work in brand voice and localisation as some of the most meaningful parts of her role.
“In the short term, I’m taking a breather. After that, I’ll be looking for roles where verbal transparency, strong editorial judgment and cultural savvy are treated as essential and where creative is still a thing. At that time, I’ll be eager for formal leads and wild gossip about more smart, interesting teams doing smart, interesting work,” she wrote.
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Social media reactions
Her post drew reactions from several LinkedIn users.
“Whether a single cell on a single spreadsheet was changed matters so much less than all the other positive ripples of your work and message. Brava. Take a bow and a well-deserved break. Congratulations on all you’ve achieved and all that is next,” one user commented.
Another user warned about the risks of stepping away in the current job market. “Taking a voluntary breather in this market could invite a year of unemployment or more,” the comment read.
“Julie, I’m so glad you got to leave on your own terms, and I know you’ll be amazing at whatever comes next. Enjoy your breather!” wrote a third user.
