About

My name is Anthony Roca. I have been producing payroll slips since 2014, and teaching how to produce them since 2018. For the past few years, I have seen a growing number of cases — in my training sessions and at my client firms — that raise a simple, uncomfortable question: what is left of a salary when AI handles the employee's tasks?

This site exists to address that question publicly. Not as a theorist — I am not one. As a practitioner who has learned to think from what he sees.

My background

I came to payroll through a career change in 2012. For several years, I worked as a payroll manager in accounting firms and in companies. In 2018, I launched La Paie Facile — a blog aimed at people learning the profession, whether through career change or initial training.

The blog progressively turned into a vocational training organization. In 2022, I incorporated Les Publications Anthony Roca (a French SARL based in La Mure), which now publishes the blog, runs the training programs, and sends a daily newsletter.

Alongside this, I continue to work as an active payroll practitioner. The distinction matters: I do not only train people in a profession I once practiced. I train them in a profession I continue to practice — in real client companies, with real payroll slips, real URSSAF audits, real collective bargaining agreements. This dual position is, in my view, what separates a trainer from a practitioner-trainer.

My qualifications

Les Publications Anthony Roca is a registered French training organization (registration n° 44670701067) and is Qualiopi-certified (certificate n° B03877, issued by ICPF, COFRAC-accredited). Qualiopi is the French national quality certification required of vocational training organizations to access public funding.

I am personally a Silae-certified trainer. Silae is the leading payroll software in French accounting firms.

I prepare and train candidates for the French Professional Title in Payroll Management (Titre Professionnel Gestionnaire de Paie, RNCP37948), a level-5 certification awarded by the French Ministry of Labor. I have served as an examination juror for this title.

I have collaborated with the University of Strasbourg as an examination juror for its bachelor's program in payroll, and with France Travail (the French national employment agency, formerly Pôle Emploi) to train payroll managers on the Silae software.

My work

My training activity is organized around three areas:

Paie 101: a hands-on course for learning payroll from scratch. Available at paie-101.fr.

Silae training: for working payroll managers who want to master the software that dominates the French market. Individual sessions and in-firm training.

Professional Title in Payroll Management: a complete certifying program (450 hours, RNCP level 5), available through distance learning.

My training is aimed at working practitioners and at people transitioning into the profession.

In addition, I run a YouTube channel, an Instagram account, a daily newsletter, and a technical blog with more than 600 articles covering the full range of French payroll topics.

My positions

My pedagogical approach rests on a principle I treat as a deliberate stance: manual calculation before software. I refuse to teach payroll to people who have never understood where the numbers come from. A payroll manager who cannot calculate a payslip by hand is a data-entry operator — and will be replaced by any reasonably smart piece of software. A payroll manager who can calculate remains a professional, because they hold a responsibility no machine will ever hold.

The same logic led me to write the white paper that opens this site. I do not believe AI will replace payroll managers. I believe it will expose the opaque part of their positions — and of all white-collar positions. Those who can articulate what they hold beyond execution will rise. The others will fall. Not because the machine is better than them, but because they will no longer be able to say in what way they are better than it.

This conviction is not an armchair thesis. It is what I see, every week, in real companies, with real executives, who hesitate and decide. The investigation notebook published on this site is my way of sharing those observations, testing them against reality, and accepting that they may be corrected if they turn out to be wrong.

Contact

For any question, contribution, contradiction, or press inquiry: contact page or directly at [email protected].

For citation guidelines for journalistic or academic work: citing page.

For my payroll training activities: la-paie-facile.com (in French).