Two years back, I created a little web analytics tool for my side projects and I called Faenz. It's open source and self-hostable, available on GitHub at https://github.com/a-chris/faenz.
I've recently given it an update and came up with the idea of creating a demo version that's accessible to everyone.
How does it work?
You can add your own website, blog or e-commerce site and keep track of the visits it receives. Your website stats will be visible to others, and you'll get to check out everyone else's stats too. You won't be allowed to edit/delete a website, you should reach out to me for that.
I find it to be a fun experiment to see how people handle SEO or just to discover some cool new websites :)
Author here, I've built my blog with NextJS a few years ago but now I'm in the process of migrate to Birdgetown Ruby. I wrote a blog posts explaining the reasons behind my choose
I can confirm. Also the technology used really counts: with Javascript I got weird error and there are no standard in the ecosystem so I found my self looking on Google and SO all the time. With Ruby, on the other hand, there are better documentation, no weird errors and everything seems so smooth that I visit StackOverflow just once a month. I have been working with JS for 3 years and just 1 year with Rub
You can definitely be paid laid off employee for a period of time, while having your access revoked. They're completely orthogonal. Depends on role, company, situation. It's an assessment and tradeoff - is it worth / do I need the next two weeks of work and KT from this person, vs the risk of having access.
The notion of revoking security access to limit risk is definitely not a US thing.
In the UK you have to provide employees with a consultation period, which is typically done while the employee is still carrying out their day-to-day jobs (dependent on the reason for the redundancy). I believe it is similar in other EU companies.
Revoking access and not allowing users to complete their jobs would often be seen as a failure to consult (see, for instance, the recent P&O ferries dismissals where they immediately removed ship access from the crew, replaced them with oversees workers, and then began consultation. This was a failure to consult and was found to be illegal).
People tend not to do rash things anyway during this period, as gross misconduct during that time would mean the employee is instantly fired regardless with zero redundancy pay. Treat people fairly and as adults and they tend to behave fairly and respond as adults. Treat people as untrustworthy and rash, and they tend to respond with the same.
This assumes that the employee has been working for the company for more than 2 years. If it's less than that, they have no such protection and can be fired for any reason whatsoever.
> This assumes that the employee has been working for the company for more than 2 years. If it's less than that, they have no such protection and can be fired for any reason whatsoever.
There are some protections, but yes, they are much more limited (in particular, anything that would generally be classified as automatic unfair dismissal is still protected, for instance for whistleblowing, joining a trade union, firing someone for raising a health and safety concern or for going on maternity leave).
You will likely still want to capture and document the genuine reason under either performance, absence or conduct grounds in order to protect against any invalid claim that the dismissal was because of a protected reason if it was brought to tribunal (when in reality it wasn't).
Yep definitely, but if it's just a case of the business isn't doing well and they need to cut headcount then they absolutely can do that without going through a redundancy process.
Although it may still be better to go through formal redundancy so you can make the redundancy on the basis of performance rather than just length of service.
Consultation seems to be more like an explicitly defined way to fire an employee (they are entitled to learn why and what has been done to try to keep them). It does not look like it is prohibiting garden leave.
In the UK, if you place an employee on garden leave immediately there is a legal argument during tribunal that the redundancy was predetermined (and thus unfair).
You mentioned that "they are entitled to learn why and what has been done to try to keep them", but actually it's much further than that - they are entitled to be part of the conversation and to propose alternatives to the dismissal which the company is legally obligated to consider.
As an example, if the redundancy proposes to make a team redundant and split that teams responsibilities across other teams, the consultation might raise that the team being made redundant could take on additional responsibilities and down-size as an alternative which could result in fewer redundancies. Similarly, employees could suggest an initial round of voluntary redundancies first to reduce the people impact (particularly if there are employees nearing retirement age). The employer is legally obligated to genuinely consider these alternatives, however if the action was taken immediately to disband the team and place employees on gardening leave it is much more difficult for them to argue that the consultation was 'genuine'.
If a genuine consultation is not held, where alternatives are listened to and genuinely considered, this could then be brought to an employment tribunal and could open them to unfair dismissal claims.
Maybe only a few countries allow to terminate and put on garden leave immediately, I'm not talking about them. There's always some procedure that ensures that dismissal is fair and justified: when this procedure is concluded and there's no other option found but to fire, the employee should not be entitled to work until contract is terminated - they can be put on the garden leave and in that case their access should be terminated, the equipment they used can be sold etc.
It's quite common in the UK for an employee to work their notice period after redundancy has been announced / consultation has been concluded (e.g. to allow for a handover of the role to respective teams).
Garden leave is not a necessity (particularly if you have structured your company so a single employee cannot go too rogue regardless - if a single bad-apple employee can take down coinbase then they have bigger systemic risks!).
Have had colleagues who were required to not work for their resignation period (3 months). "Professional quarantine," since they were going to competitors.
>You can definitely be paid laid off employee for a period of time, while having your access revoked.
In France, this is a breach of contract as you are not providing your employees with the means to work, and you can be sued for it if it is not done as a disciplinary measure (which you can also be sued for if not done in good faith)
EDIT: my dudes stop trying to link legifrance articles to me, I have literally been in this situation twice, gone to prud'hommes twice and helped multiple friends with such a situation. I'm starting to know our work code a little bit.
EDIT 2: alright, more context for all the nonbelievers and people who never had to face an actual work code:
In the very best case for the employer (in such a way that doesn't expose them to being sued), firing a single employee takes two weeks.
* Initial notification of the firing, with at least 5 days between this notification and the meeting before firing to explain the reasons
* Meeting before firing, a mandatory 48 hours waiting period before taking any decision.
* Notification has to be mailed in as a recommandé, which can only be sent after those 48 hours, and takes a day or two to arrive.
It gets infinitely more complicated for Coinbase sized companies trying to lay off more than 10 people for economical reasons, the company is obligated to have meetings with the employee representatives, at the very least twice spaced by 15 days. For a company the size of Coinbase, the CSE has 2-4 months to answer and can ask for proof that the company is, indeed in financial troubles, having them open their books. https://entreprendre.service-public.fr/vosdroits/F24648
Doesn't seem correct "Upon termination of employment, the employer may release the employee from working during all or part of the notice period and pay him an indemnity in lieu of notice"
However, any firing must be notified of an entretien préalable de licenciement by letter (can be given directly). This is usually a week after, to grant the employee time to prepare (and to eventually be helped by employee representatives). Then, after this, the employer has to give at least 48 hours before doing anything. This gets even worse in the case of a massive layoff like Coinbase's for economical reasons, the company is obligated to have meetings with the employee representatives, at the very least twice spaced by 15 days. For a company the size of Coinbase, the CSE has 2-4 months to answer and can ask for proof that the company is, indeed in financial troubles, having them open their books. https://entreprendre.service-public.fr/vosdroits/F24648
So, in practice, while quick firings are possible for individual cases, massive layoffs like that do not happen over a single day.
So if you want to lay someone off in France, you have to allow them access to company facilities and systems and allow them to work? You cannot just pay them through their severance period, but tell them to stay home? If so, that’s absurd, and I don’t see what purpose it would serve.
Are you sure? This is a quite common practice for businesses to put the fired employees on paid leave until the contract is terminated, I would be really surprised if that would not be possible in France.
Article L1234-5 [1] of French Labor Code looks like it is possible.
Paid leave is entirely different. Paid leave is, well, leave. You do not have to show up to the office, unable to do anything.
L1234-5 (which is a very nice number) merely says that you have to pay the employee a compensation if the préavis is not respected, equal to the amount of days the employee would have worked, in addition to everything else (severance package, etc). It gets more complicated in the case of massive layoffs, because the CSE/lawyers get involved, and for a 50+ employee company firing over 10 employees, a plan de sauvegarde de l'emploi is put into place, which lasts multiple months.
How is it different? If you are on paid leave, you are not supposed to do any work. For security reasons your access can and should be restricted for this period.
The only context in which you can be technically still employed but be refused access to your work tools is if you are suspended for a grave mistake. Abuse this at your own risk, as the employee isn't paid in the mean time and will very likely get tribunal-happy. Any other concept (paid leave, maternity leave, vacation leave, * leave) means you are still an employee of the company and the company is legally obligated to give you access to your work tools.
On leave, you are trusted as an employee to not do any work. Anything you do will be your own responsibility, or eventually the employer's responsibility to refuse any work you hand over. You are also not covered by the company's insurance on your leave. Your company cutting off access is a clear breach of contract.
Can you refer to a specific regulation or legal precedent proving this point in clear words?
This does sound non-sensical to me. If someone is not working, there should not be any entitlement to access.
To give you an example: let’s say a factory is temporarily closed due to lack of supply materials or modernization and workers are put on paid leave. Are those workers allowed to visit their workplace to access their tools? If not, why digital workers should have this privilege when they are on paid leave?
>not providing your employees with the means to work
Logic would dictate that providing the exact same pay/benefits as one would get for the work ought to be sufficient. But, <insert joke about logic and French labour laws here>...
Logic would also dictate that the employer-employee power relationship is inherently biased towards the employer, and that said employer can hurt you much more than you can hurt him. You not doing your job for a month might be impractical, but it's relatively easy to get over. You suddenly being out of a job with no warning and your severance is much more damaging.
Also consider that software developer is an incredibly privileged position and that, while you may not give a shit because you get 100k and can find another job in two weeks, many people have a salary that barely covers their living expenses and take much longer to find a new job. In effect, that would be subsidizing employers through unemployment benefits and therefore, cost society as a whole.
<insert joke about american laws having no foresight or absolutely fuck all experience in fighting for workers>
Coming from an American perspective, that is super interesting. I don't think I understand why it is seen as harm to the employee? They are getting full pay, but aren't required to do anything for it.
* as an employee, you sign a contract that exchanges your time for both a salary and a job. Refusing to provide either of those is a breach of contract. It's one thing to say "things are a bit slow right now, so do whatever". It is an entirely other one to not give your employee tools, access to things they'd need to do their job, or even leave them wondering if they even have a job still. Doubly worse if you require them to come to the office to not know what to do. Hence, the common solution to that is to change their job to something that just puts them in the corner on mostly useless tasks. They're technically working, but you can't fire them unless you have a good reason to. It's then hoped that the boredom makes you leave. However, that goes in to point two:
* Putting people in such a position is alienating and potentially damaging mentally. You are seen as the guy who does fuck all by your colleagues, you are not allowed to take another job in the mean time, itb is mentally unfulfilling and morally discouraging. Do so at your own risks, because there have been plenty of instances where the employer has had to pay damages.
Basically, if you want to fire someone, either do it and pay the (quite expensive if the employee has been here for a while) indemnities, or don't. The halfway solution of boring them until they quit is illegal.
That doesn't seem right. This discussion (as I understand it) is NOT about having a full time employee with no access.
It is when somebody is explicitly fired and laid off (as is the case in Coinbase, and all the examples I believe we've been discussing in this thread).
They DO know what their status is, it's not ambiguous. Essentially it is: "Hi; You've been laid off; your services are no longer required; we will continue paying you for the remainder of your contractual notice period / two weeks; you'll get whatever package is due to you; please go home and ensure you take all of your materials with you."
This is completely unrelated to any notion of effectively dis-empowering an active employee or keeping them in the dark.
>> You can definitely be paid laid off employee for a period of time, while having your access revoked.
and replying
> In France, this is a breach of contract
And now you write
> you may however send the employee home with his full salary and no obligation to work
Which was exactly the original claim!
I'm not sure if you misread or misunderstood, but you have been arguing incorrectly in most of your subsequent replies, and the sarcastic jibes at other countries don't help.
France is a more trusting society than the USA, so I won't be surprised if gardening leave is less common, but you can be sure it's sometimes used when employees of investment banks, defence contractors, the government, military etc are made redundant or resign.
The core part of the problem is "you revoke his access". It's simple. You revoke someone's access, it is akin to firing, and it is illegal.
Send people home with their severence after the necessary period to inform the employee that they're getting fired, sure. But telling them out of the blue "Fuck off, don't come to work today, your access is revoked" is a breach of contract and is illegal.
So, no, you cannot be a paid laid off employee with no access. You're either employee, paid a salary and with access, or not an employee with your severance package and no access. There is no inbetween, and your lack of reading comprehension doesn't mean i misunderstood.
It is not "Akin to firing", it IS an action following firing or laying off.
>>You're either employee, paid a salary and with access, or not an employee with your severance package and no access.
The latter. It's the latter. We've all been discussing the latter (or at least that's my impression, as that's what the original article is about, and certainly what my post was about :).
No. In many places the law and the contract states that the company has to provide the required means to do work described in the contract.
If they change the job description to "do nothing" then it needs unilateral signing of a amendment to the contract. (And that can count as mobbing.)
Nobody is saying it's the only way to do things. In USA it's not the only way to do things. It's not only done in USA (I worked in Canada and in Europe, never in USA).
I'm Canadian, it's our national pastime to diss our neighbours to the South, but the notion that a laid off employee can be a high risk to the company knows no borders. Are we making a claim that those working on Rafale or Gripen get to keep messing with classified files after being fired, because "we don't DO that in Europe"? :)
Let me tell it differently. I have seen people fired or laid off and exactly one was taken away immediately. The exact same company fire also different people, without walking them out immediately via security.
I have heard of one more person fired that way - it was by American company and pretty much everyone else treated it as great injustice. Team members met with him in nearby pub pretty much right after.
This is true in the US as well. While in some cases you can lay someone off, and immediately stop paying, most of the time there is a period where the former employee will be paid and not have to come to work (or really, allowed to).
It’s the exact same in the US. Most companies pay a decent severance that is tied to tenure and is meant to avoid lawsuits. If you resign and they don’t want you to stay for 2 weeks then they will still pay you.
Severance is different, though. My contract, for example, requires the employer to give me 3 month's notice (well, potentially up to 4 since the 3 month timer doesn't start until the first day of the month after notice was given), and without a very good reason to do so (we think we might run into cash problems if we don't do this wouldn't count), they'd have to offer a significant amount of money to get me to leave voluntarily - often times that ends up being about a month's pay per year worked.
Yes but you can't really "cut them off". You can tell them they don't need to be there, and most will be happy not to. But you can't revoke their access for no reason.
If you want to do that you need to prove they have (already) committed a fault of such gravity that allowing them to stay would harm the company irremediably -- it's a high bar to cross.
Europe is not a country, there are different laws everywhere. I haven't seen one yet, that would explicitly make it forbidden to cut off the access. Can you share a link to such law?
I think they can cut you off here but it's less common.
If I get fired from my company I get like a year's wage to go (and government assistance after that) so I wouldn't be that upset. Hence no need for a disorderly exit.
I think it's more in the US when people are let go with nothing, I think it's pretty obvious that they'd be pissed about it.
I've definitely seen people told there's nothing left for them to do, and their accounts and access immediately turned off. Why would they need access to systems or the office if they have no tasks? Are you saying there's some kind of right they have as an employee to come in and work even if they are told not to and there are no tasks assigned to them?
I have seen people fired in the morning and their access cutoff by noon and them being asked to go on "gardening leave" in Europe.
This is rare but depends on your manager, if they don't want you around.
You will still be paid for the remaining of your "employment" but will not be working.
It’s also more typical in situations where serious damage could be done by a malicious act. I’ve seen a UK Finance Director escorted from his desk because of this.
Even in Austria, tech workers ca be fired on the spot without any reason and sent home (though you stil have to pay them the duration of their notice period, which I believe is called gardening leave on this topic), or you can still keep them working in the office during their notice period, but then you need to give them 10 days off to look for jobs.
Over here in North America is common. Been to so many companies last few years and it’s always escort out of building right away.
The one I remember most is how our coworkers coffee was still there for like a week. She had made it literally right before getting called in for the layoff!
Apparently main thing is they don’t want them to start a scene, talk shit about things, and cause issues with their computer access
Those people's contracts aren't invalidated by revoking access. Those companies are basically saying you're not expected to do any more work except react to our emails until the end of whatever the notice period is. And the same thing might be less common but can definitely happen to you in Europe as well, it mostly depends on which sector/roles you work in.
> You can fire people from the night to the morning only in US
And in most of the Europe and I'd guess also world during probation period (typically in Europe 1-3 months).
But yeah, you can't do that once probation period pass, then it's usually at least 1-3 months PAID resignation period. You can tell people not to come to work and still get salary though, but if they would still wanna come it could get very messy legally.
I had actually only fixed contracts during my EU jobs and either company told me they won't extend the contract or I told them I won't extend it, but they were happy to keep me working until very end.
Only in China during Microsoft layoff I was told I don't need to come to work, while getting compensation, but that was understandable considering me and other Israeli girl were only two people fighting against company trying to cheat us for our legal compensation and it came to me telling them whether they wanna leak certain data and me contact labor bureau about their illegal procedures.
The same happens in Europe. It did not happen to my but a friend but he knew that he was the one to go when he couldn't login to his laptop after lunch break. And when they let him do it to finish some things he got someone watching behind his back.
In Europe I think it's far less common to be fired in the first place, I actually know zero people that was ever fired (but I'm not saying that it doesn't happen, I think it even happened recently at Klarna).
Firing is very common in Europe depending on specific country and it's laws and the industry we're talking about (is it unionized? are the employees easily replaceable? immigration, etc).
In Austria it's super easy to fire jobs like white collar tech workers and sales people without any reason as the employee protection laws are very weak (you just have to give them their notice period). At every company I've worked here I've seen people get fired after not meeting their performance goals(PIPs), or even having too slow velocity in Jira's charts, or just some manager having an axe to grind.
There's no magic protection aura from the government to save you from getting fired here.
Redundancy is a different matter to firing for cause, and I definitely read 'firing' as meaning the latter.
I suspect the fact that some people in this thread read it the way I do, and others (I guess including you?) read 'firing' to include redundancy, is causing a fair amount of confusion / people talking past each other.
(I'm not claiming I'm right and you're wrong, btw, just observing a linguistic disconnect)
It’s true in the US too, depends on the risk of terminated employees causing intentional harm. Most of the time layoffs come with severance making it similar to your “garden leave” situations.
It depends on the company/position more than the country. People with high access levels / dealing with lots of money will be treated differently than receptionists for example.
I’ve been laid off and it’s varied between 6 months notice and 2 weeks.
Note, whether you get walked out the door right away or later, in these types of job you get a severance package.
In my case where it was two weeks it was work 2 weeks, go home keep getting paid for another 30 days, then start your paid 60 day WARN period, then actually separate and receive severance of ~9 months pay plus heath insurance for 1 year.
Did you see the severance the ex-employees are getting? It’s super generous and amounts to months of work. Id rather that than face the humiliation of having to come in for weeks to a company that has fired me.
Flexible labor laws are also a major reason Americans are paid considerably more than euros.
It is not generous everywhere. In the Netherlands you get 1/6 salary for every 6 months, so only two months salary if you’ve been at the company for six years.
talk to your laywer. there is probably some mistake in your paperwork or something that's not so clear or maybe the wrong people were left out/included in the process. European work laws can be complicated and not all hr people are on top of everything.
Helped me a lot a few years back and got me from "you are fired without severance" to "you are paid for six more months, you don't have to come in and here is half a year's pay in severance". Companies want to shock you into submission, hand it to an external party, lean back end enjoy.
I haven't been laid off myself, fortunately, just relaying the information that was given by the company I worked for. That is the standard policy and is quite different from "months of work enshrined in law" as the parent comment suggested.
> Having to spend half your available income for things that are automatically taken on your salary in Europe is _the_ major reason Americans are paid considerably more, with "US tech companies and VCs have so much money they don't give a damn about salary" as a close second.
I don’t think you can name many things here that the American tech workers have to spend on, that are included in typical European social benefits package. For example, if you were thinking about healthcare, you would be very wrong, as American tech workers spend very small fraction of their pay on healthcare, smaller than a typical European tech worker.
Health care for my family of four is $5000/yr at my employee, although that’s pre-tax. If I were single it would be free. This covers essentially everything, I’ve had $10s of thousands of surgery for which I paid nothing myself. I never have to wait for medical care, I can just go same day whenever I want. Prescriptions cost me $0.
Health care in the US is only expensive if you are poor and unemployed, sad to say.
> Having to spend half your available income for things that are automatically taken on your salary in Europe is _the_ major reason Americans are paid considerably more
Are you thinking of anything beyond healthcare? Youre correct that salaries and GDP are difficult to compare, but US disposable income pc is dramatically higher than almost anywhere in Europe, with the couple exceptions being tiny enclaves like Luxembourg or petrostates like Norway. Subtracting healthcare spending doesn't come close to closing the gap btwn the US and eg France.
And this isn't explicable by retirement either, as Actual Individual Consumption is also dramatically higher in the US.
Hell, I'm not even sure your hypothesis makes sense at first glance. If the salary difference was simply a matter of shifting govt spending into the personal ledger, wouldn't pretax incomes be as high in Europe? After all, much of the layoffs we're talking about are high-income enough that the employees would surely be net-payers in any mildly progressive tax system.
I(an american) was quitting a job at a UK company and tried to put in my 2 weeks notice, they said the standard was a 2 months notice for them and so I just kinda bumbled along for 2 months not doing much. Really odd practice
I've usually (in the UK) had 1 month's notice upon quitting and spent it doing documentation updates and handover meetings. I managed to use pretty much the entire time productively - though admittedly one could make a good argument that that was because I hadn't been making time to document things better previously.
I've known quite a few senior developers with a 3 months' notice period baked into their contract.
It's not odd at all really -- it just sounds like you weren't a perticularly key employee. For many roles, the extra time to ensure continuity and handover is very valuable.
Only in the US? What about Australia or Canada? What about China or Russia? You have no idea how hard it can be to fire a state or federal employee here in the US. I’m guessing there are regions or industries in Europe where it is easy to fire employees. The situation is so much more complex than US bad Europe good. Poorly constructed swipes like this are becoming more and more common and it’s disappointing.
Yeah, because we spend the whole day reversing a linked list in your real-life SWE job, right?
It's ridiculous that we have to study all those algorithms that we will never use it in your life, it's just too much.
I had an interview once that wanted me to do A-star "find fastest routing of internet packets between sites" and when I presented a brute force path finder and he complained about the big O, I told him that his problem as framed only featured tens of graphs and his business domain as framed (as a function of the company's domain) would never have more than 20 sites, and anyways a sneakernet (ship ssds) would be faster (which he conceded).
Me: “This is a domain I’m familiar with because I spent 9 years working in the bill payment industry. Here all of the corner cases you have to deal with. You’re much better off using these USPS certified CASS solutions instead of writing it internally for these reasons and went on to explain all of the drawbacks of writing software that didn’t give you a competitive advantage.”
The middle level developer interviewing me wasn’t impressed. The director was and I got the job and soon became the lead.
Opposite situation for me. I've been using Sourcetree for YEARS and it was a PITA, so bad, slow and counterintuitive. On the other hand Fork saved my mental health and it's by far the best git manager I've always used. This is the only software I would be happy to pay for.
I'm trying to switch from Heroku to Render but it is awfully slow compared to Heroku, my Rails project takes something like 1 minute to start after it has been shut down gratefully. Moreover, it breaks the CSS assets and uses the older assets instead of the latest ones. I do not why, it is a really small project and I have none of these issue on Heroku
Sorry about that. It sounds like you're on the free plan which is somewhat underpowered vs Heroku right now. Still, definitely not the experience we hope to provide and I'd love to learn more. Email in profile.
I'm working on a self-hosted analytics like Plausible but that allows to use SQLite as primary database. Of course it should be used for small websites and side projects but it will have all the Plausible features.
Am I crazy?
I've recently given it an update and came up with the idea of creating a demo version that's accessible to everyone.
How does it work?
You can add your own website, blog or e-commerce site and keep track of the visits it receives. Your website stats will be visible to others, and you'll get to check out everyone else's stats too. You won't be allowed to edit/delete a website, you should reach out to me for that.
I find it to be a fun experiment to see how people handle SEO or just to discover some cool new websites :)
The demo is available here https://faenz.acmecorp.dev/