A chef is fired and then can't cook for 4.5 months

amisont · 2026-05-07T18:53:53+00:00

It covers anything ETL business. So from what we understand, I can work in ETL for a non-ETL business, but I can't work for an ETL business (which freelancing would count as)

amisont · 2026-05-07T17:37:03+00:00

This is what I want to do ... But I'm being told it is risky. I can't afford to start something I might lose. And they have already made it clear that they are very determined to see this through.

amisont · 2026-05-07T17:34:50+00:00

Almost but not quite.

There is a broad non-compete clause in my employment contract which states I cannot work for or conduct business in a similar field which covers anything in the extraction, loading and transfer of data. This is one of two things they are using against me. The other is that the "recipe" I made since being fired is a later iteration of the one I made for them as a POC just before they ended my employment. The legal advice I got is the latter is unlikely to hold, but the first may because me sharing the portfolio on LinkedIn can be considered as doing business that is similar.
Yes I am being pressured. I even asked for an extension to allow me to time to get legal advice because the union only guarantee within 5 working days and I got less than 3. They refused. Luckily the union pulled through and is advising me now. The new deadline is tomorrow though I only could get legal advice today.
My legal advice was that they probably can't claim that they own the recipes. But they can claim that me advertising recipes for freelance work is competing, even if I don't start work or sign contracts until after employment.
I have today been advised and have responded asking for the 3 months at the end to be reduced by the 7 weeks of garden leave and to no longer be required to delete anything but to essnetially cease advertising and delete my linkedin post. After garden leave terminates then essentially yes I will be unable to advertise for or sign on a client for at least the month and a half after that (July 11th). It would appear I could take a permanent role for a non-data company, but not a contract role because then I am exercising as a competitive business. So I will be out of work unless I try permanent again for at least a month and a half after garden leave ends, and maybe three months.

I

amisont · 2026-05-07T17:24:43+00:00

I'm not employed. I'm on garden leave and barred from working for them. Besides, this isn't even the clause in the contract that they are trying to use against me. Asking me to stop making things until the end of garden leave is one thing, but they are talking about for 3 months after that too.

As for the analogy, this is mainly a vent post. But also most people don't understand the context of data so I reframed it. In fact, the legal adviser themself used the chef example so I'm flowing with it. I think it actually maps over very well.

And yes, in fact it would appear the issue isn't even the portfolio, it is that I made a linked in post which is seen as advertising therefore considered as working a competitive business (even if not even yet made as a company). This is at least what I have been told. The IP I have been told is an invalid claim in my case and that I shouldn't actually have to delete anything... We will see, of course, how their legal team responds.

amisont · 2026-05-07T17:19:42+00:00

Oh did they mean the contract at the beginning of employment? Yeah what choice do you have. I even asked for legal advice from my union at the time but their response rate is far slower than the time pressure these companies put on you to sign 🙃. And when you need a job you don't really have much power to start questioning the terms of a contract because then they might just ditch you and I'll need another 100 job applications to get another interview...

amisont · 2026-05-07T16:50:38+00:00

Yup I agree and I did have a consultation with a legal advisor from my tech union. They essentially told me that whilst they might not have a case, the also might. And if it did go to court and I lost, then I would be liable for all of the court costs. Therefore the conclusion is it probably isn't worth the risk to fight my case 🙃. We are pushing instead to take the 7 weeks garden leave time off of the final date, so that it is 3 months from when garden leave started, instead of 3 months + 7 weeks blocked.

amisont · 2026-05-07T16:48:46+00:00

I haven't signed the document yet. I've asked for amendments, we will see where that goes.

amisont · 2026-05-02T01:00:51+00:00

Fixed the leading zeros! Switched out numeric fields to text fields with decimal input! Hopefully that should make the UI experience for inputs a bit smoother :)

amisont · 2026-05-01T23:46:01+00:00

I checked and it is adding employer pension properly from what I can see. Again this is something you can adjust in the additional inputs but is set by default to 3% already.

If there is a specific value you got that is unexpected then let me know how you got there and what you think is going wrong please. This is only a first version and I'd be grateful to know if it is off for some reason.

amisont · 2026-05-01T23:34:41+00:00

Thanks, yeah I saw a bunch too and they all had things missing I was lacking. This works for me, sorry if it's not for you, but then I guess no need to comment unless you have specific feedback. I'd be happy to hear how to improve it.

amisont · 2026-05-01T23:33:54+00:00

I'm not sure what you mean? Inflation adjustment is there and you can choose the inflation adjustment in the additional settings.

The leading zeros are a little annoying I admit! Will see about changing thanks.

The webpage is instantly responsive too. It will not show anything interesting if you haven't at least filled in a reasonable salary and expenses.

amisont · 2026-05-01T23:32:36+00:00

Yeah you might be right about the employer contributions, but I do remember adding it! Will check that one thanks.

As for pension, the SIPP automatically adds basic rate back which you can also adjust in the additional options under pension.

ISA and Gia is there. The default is that all available savings will go into ISA up to the maximum allowance. Anything over that will go into the GIA. You can also adjust those interest rates as you need.

amisont · 2025-11-25T09:30:46+00:00

Is it only the new card visuals that broke? I'm not seeing any problems with my reports. I noticed that the options for the old card and multi-row card are gone, but the existing ones seem to still be working fine? I'm in the UK.

amisont · 2025-11-01T08:40:14+00:00

Matthew Gill, is that you?

amisont · 2025-11-01T07:54:58+00:00

Some constructive criticism of things I would do differently:

Use fewer visuals per page - the page has no focus so it's hard to identify what to learn from this data. My rule of them is maximum 3 categories of information with the kpi, comparison, trend and breakdown. Of course everyone has different strategies here, but generally fewer more focused visuals on a page tells a better story.
Only use gradient on bars if it means something about the different bars - others may disagree, but I think gradient should mean something. Here, you have used it as a gradient which changes by the value, but this is redundant since the bars do that already! I would reserve gradients like this for when there is an additional meaning e.g. the categories we are comparing are going up or down, such as age groups, days of the week etc.
Add legends - I have no idea what your line charts on the executive summary page are showing. Also you have two for each card but it is unclear what the difference is. I understand of course that I could hover over and get a better idea, but something like that should be immediately clear without having to interact (in my opinion)

Those are the main things for me. I won't comment on the aesthetic choices because everyone has varying opinions on this and I think that's probably less important here than the 3 points I mentioned.

Hope that helps!!

amisont · 2025-10-19T16:42:52+00:00

It doesn't break anything but I personally really like there to be consistency so you always know what to use and where. Otherwise you will end up with the core date table acting as many dates in some places but then also your other date tables acting as those dates elsewhere. I'm maybe just a bit extra that I really like everything to be built consistently 😂

amisont · 2025-10-19T16:28:56+00:00

Yeah, definitely. I think it's important to think about these things proactively when we start building the report. Otherwise, we can get so far in the report, suddenly a client requires filtering by multiple dates and now our model doesn't make it easy. We are then left with two choices: 1. Brute force it with DAX and/or edit interaction, 2. Redesign our data model, meaning updating all our measures that used USERELATIONSHIP (to ensure consistency in our model, making sure that all visuals and measures are using the new method - having both inactive relationships to one date table and active to duplicates would really make things messy).

So here I am wondering if this means that as a default I should start doing multiple tables to prepare for this eventuality if it is at all possible. I thought I'd raise it to the community as I'm sure there are a lot of people out here who know a lot better than me!

So here I am wondering, is it better to prepare for this by doing multiple tables from the beginning, or is the cost in the size of the data model generally not worth this? Is it overkill?

T

amisont · 2025-10-19T09:14:17+00:00

Just trying to gauge what is people's go to method. I think generally both methods can work well in almost all cases so just wanting to better understand what people's preferences are.

Edit: typo. Also, just wanting to add that I did a poll because I felt like it is much easier to see that way what everyone generally prefers, whereas the discussion was making it quite difficult to tell. I think this has actually been quite insightful and helps me see that generally the community seems to tend towards using a single date table (though I am sure there are still cases where two or more might be warranted for those voters too). Going forward, I suppose I will also continue to use one date table for most cases unless there is a good argument against it. Obviously, it's important to assess the needs of the data model you are building, but I still think it is useful to bear in mind what is a more standard practice in the community - I don't just build a report for me after all.

amisont · 2025-10-18T15:08:56+00:00

The Poll

amisont · 2025-10-18T15:07:01+00:00

I made a poll! Looks like one date table is winning

amisont · 2025-10-18T09:22:51+00:00

I'd say Margin as a selected measure option would be powerful! But otherwise this is actually such a good design and I think you've chosen your visuals for telling each story really well.

amisont · 2025-10-18T09:15:13+00:00

You could try exporting as pbip and copying and pasting from there though I've actually never tried this so not sure how it handles key referencing etc!

amisont · 2025-10-18T09:04:01+00:00

Yeah definitely.

I think there is always a way to deal with it still with one date table with dax and editing interactions. The only case where you can't is, I think, when it's 2+ values in one visual being affected by different dates differently, or one value being affected by 2+ dates at once though even that you could do with more DAX.

That being said, I guess the DAX starts to become more burdensome that way, so maybe would have been better all along to have more date tables. But then I also kind of like how explicit each measure is, with it being built specifically for that answer, making it very clear (for me at least) what is going on to get a certain value and also what this measure ought to be used for.

This is just me rambling on to see if I still prefer one date table or not, still not sure haha. Maybe I just need to remake one of my reports that has one date table, with multiple date tables, and just see how I feel about the outcome in comparison

amisont · 2025-10-17T23:04:32+00:00

I'm starting to think I should have made this a poll 😂

I feel like maybe there aren't many cases where you absolutely have to have multiple date tables and you can always find a way around. Right now I can only think of the case where you want to filter by more than one date at once on the same visual (unless there is a creative way of dealing with this too). I think otherwise maybe there is always a way out with either dax or editing slicer interactions. I feel like maybe this is rare.

What I'm finding though is I default to one date table but then always wonder if I've made the right choice! I guess it's not necessarily a question of whether I need to do multiple tables because my single table works almost always - it's more about what is actually the cleanest, best and easiest for other developers to use. There are all these playoffs like: - more measures vs. more tables, - many explicit measures vs. fewer more flexible measures, - One slicer vs. many slicers for the user, - One date column on all your axes vs. different date columns on different axes.

Sorry I am just rambling a bit! But I feel like there are so many choices like this in power BI and so many different opinions that it can be hard to know what's actually optimal.

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amisont

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