The Inside Word is a weekly feature that looks at unusual industry debates and discussions unfolding on the blogs of employees at digital-media companies.

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Poster: Jason Yormark

Blog name: JasonYormark.com

Company: Formerly a community manager for Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Advertising; now unemployed

Backstory: Just about every tech company of any size has employees who maintain blogs that disseminate news from their employers. Some of these bloggers have lost their jobs in recent rounds of layoffs. That has presented them with a particularly awkward challenge: how to tell readers that the company they’ve been gushing about has eliminated their positions.

Blog Entry: A little over a month after posting a video promoting Microsoft’s announcements at Search Engine Strategies Day in New York, Yormark wrote an entry titled, “Confessions of a casualty of the Microsoft layoffs.” (The company laid off about 3,000 people in a second round of cuts earlier this month.) In the post, he talks about how surprised he was to lose his job: “I mean, c’mon, it’s Microsoft, one of the most successful and wealthy companies in the world. They could sustain practically anything, right?” He acknowledges, though, that much of the work he did could easily be outsourced. Yormark ends by telling readers that he would take another job at Microsoft if offered one.

Post-script: Other Microsoft employee bloggers have dealt with being pink-slipped in their own ways. (Some listed their accomplishments; others were more curt, basically listing their forwarding information). A couple days after the blog post, Yormark wrote a followup entry: “I haven’t been ‘officially’ shut down quite yet, so I find myself still checking the work email. Not sure why exactly, but my guess is that when you put four years of your life into something, there’s still going to be some sort of emotional connection with the work. The network hammer comes down Friday, so I’ll guess I’ll have to get my fix with the personal email for awhile.”