In an unconventional move, a one-time content designer at Facebook admitted to having “asked to be included” in Meta’s layoffs this week. Julie Bone, who was with the Mark Zuckerberg-led giant for six years—which she said “is longer than 80% of the company”—shocked social media users with her layoff confession on May 20 (US time).
On Wednesday, her SNS post joined a seemingly endless stream of heavy-hearted tweets and LinkedIn messages in which Meta employees across the world expressed their emotional distress upon being fired from the tech firm. May 20, which ultimately emerged as a “doomsday” date for many professional careers, marked the beginning of another sweeping round of global terminations impacting approximately 8,000 employees amid Meta’s lofty investments in artificial intelligence.
While many of those affected by Meta’s layoffs chose to reminisce about good old memories shared with co-workers or grieve their lost jobs, Bone chose a different path. Here’s how her LinkedIn post set her apart from the others.
Meet the Facebook employee who asked to be laid off
Along with her unexpected layoff confession, Julie Bone pitched herself for new “roles where verbal transparency, strong editorial judgment, and cultural savvy are treated as essential and where creative is still a thing.” Although included in this week’s Meta layoffs, she served as a content designer for Facebook in Los Angeles, California, for six years, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Prior to that journalism graduate (bachelor of science) from Texas A&M University worked as a senior multiplatform editor at The Washington Post for over nine years, following a four-year stint at The Washington Times.
As Meta’s layoff announcement marked a professional split from the social media giant, Bone acknowledged that her choice to actively pitch her own name for the monumental career shift was “not an impulsive decision.”
“For a long time now, Meta’s ambitions and my own were in different continents,” she wrote online. “I wanted to move on because the timing was right for my personal life, and partly because I hoped it might help save the spot of someone who wanted to stay.”
Recounting her time at the company this past year, she said, “I learned to vibe-code to prototype, vibe-code to land fixes in the codebase, and build and deploy agents that transformed my rote weekly tasks. I was wetting my feet in prompt design. I’m not even special among my fellow designers in reorienting my skills.”
Akin to Mark Zuckerberg’s message to employees in a memo announcing this week’s layoffs, Bone noted, “‘AI-first’ is an expectation at Meta.” And yet, she added, “It’s not technophobic to say that no amount of AI upskilling will protect workers without coordinated action.”
Bone divulged that while she’s “taking a breather” for the time being, she was “leaving with deep respect for the CDs and XFN I worked with. Much of the work here I did was gratifying, especially in brand voice and localization, two side activities that grew into personal passions. All the thought and care we put into our work goes out the window at Mile 25 if translators aren’t properly equipped. Eventually, this pain will be felt more acutely.”
The content designer also mulled over the possibility that she was quite likely already “on the list” before she volunteered to be laid off. In her forward-looking message, Bone hoped to eventually work with “smart, interesting teams doing smart, interesting work.”
Laid-off Meta employee once worked with The Washington Post
Months back, Bone gave her two cents on another recent round of layoffs that left hundreds heartbroken at her former company, The Washington Post. The Jeff Bezos-owned newspaper fired more than 300 journalists, reducing its workforce by about 30%.
Explaining the rationale behind the layoffs, Matt Murray, The Post’s executive editor, said on a morning call with employees that the company had long been “rooted in a different era, when we were a dominant local print product.” Consequently, The Post, like many other news outlets, witnessed severely depleting online search traffic amid the rise of generative AI. As a result, the paper drastically scaled back its coverage of sports and foreign news.
Addressing the devastating news in a post at the time, Bone said, “I left The Washington Post in 2020, but I’m no less infuriated and heartbroken over last week’s shameful mass layoffs. It still hits close. I spent nearly 10 years there, and even met my husband at new-hire orientation. Alan was joining the storied Sports department. (Now eliminated.)
She continued, “The Post is famous for political reporting, but some people don’t realize the breadth of topics it covers, and that it applies that high standard of excellence across everything: travel news, a movie review, a writeup of a cocktail bar that opened in Shaw. It was — and this sounds dramatic — an honor to edit and write headlines for arts, entertainment and human-interest stories, which, like the national and breaking-news desks, have also raked in Pulitzers.”
“To Posties, particularly editors/copy editors: People need authoritative, navigable information online more than ever, whether it’s news about ICE or the accurate hours of the closest urgent-care clinic. Journalism skills are transferable. If anyone’s curious about Life After a Newsroom, I’ll happily share my experiences with you from my own jump to a different industry, even if it’s one that calls the job ‘content.'”
Reactions to the laid-off Facebook employee’s post
Kaleb Zenk, a fellow content designer who previously worked with Meta, Airbnb, and PayPal, wrote, “I got the axe, too 🙁 Thank you for being the best onboarding buddy and Reels partner!! Anyone who works with Julie Boné leaves with a sharper craft, a better sense of humor, and probably a few legendary one-liners permanently embedded in their brain.”
Gabriela de Queiroz, an ex-director of AI at Microsoft, chimed in, “I’m sorry to hear that. I went through a layoff at Microsoft a year ago, and many great things ended up happening afterward. I’d be happy to chat.”
Michelle Villacorta, another one of Bone’s co-workers at Meta, commented, “Julie, I already missed you. You are one of the best CDs/writers I’ve worked with at Meta. I missed your distinct tone when you write, as well as the vibe you brought to fandom. It was an absolute blast working with you in short period of time. I hope our paths cross again!”
Cameron Koichi Joe, a Staff Design Program Manager at Meta, said, “Leaving on your terms. You’re such a badass! Glad you’re taking the time away for you… here for ya when you’re ready to jump back in! It was an absolute pleasure working with you at Meta.”
Emil C, yet another content designer who was laid off by the company recently, said, “I’m sorry Julie. I got laid off as well, and I too was ready to move on. So I totally know how you feel. You are one of the most talented, thoughtful writers, and hope we cross paths again someday!”
AI casualties at Meta
A Goldman Sachs research recently estimated that AI has reduced monthly payroll growth by roughly 16,000 in the US this past year and raised the unemployment rate by 0.1% point. Meanwhile, live layoff tracker Layoffs.fyi, suggests that 114,210 tech employees have been laid off across 150 tech companies as of this week.
Joining companies like Cisco, Microsoft, Cloudflare, and others, Meta revealed that it was letting go of 8,000 employees this week. In a memo shared with employees on Wednesday, billionaire CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that “success isn’t a given” in a competitive AI-focused tech world, as quoted by CNBC. Hailing AI as the “most consequential technology of our lifetime,” he added, “The companies that lead the way will define the next generation.”
Despite previous reports that the company had planned to fire more employees later this year, the Meta CEO confirmed in the memo that the workers “do not expect other companywide layoffs this year” amid the company’s billion-dollar investments in artificial intelligence.
Disclaimer: The content in this article is based on a viral social media discussion and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only.