Do this: Take the job ad for your next hire and turn it into a paid, 45-minute work sample. No whiteboard, no trick questions: a slice of the real job, with AI allowed, scored on the same four lines for every candidate.
PASTE THIS
Here is the job ad: [PASTE]. Write a 45-minute paid work sample a candidate can do at home, any AI tool allowed. Use one real artifact from the job, like an email, a spreadsheet or a customer message, and say what I hand them. Then give a four-point rubric scored 1 to 5: does it solve the problem, is it accurate, would I send it as-is, can they explain one choice. Task in 200 words, rubric as a table.
You'll get: A task you can send tonight, and a score that compares candidates on the work instead of the nerves.
Five lines to send whoever maintains your website
An outsider opening a ticket can make a build run. That is a feature until it is an attack, and most small businesses never ask the question.
Send this to your developer or agency:
Please confirm in writing this week: which automated workflows run in our repository and what triggers each one; that none of them run on issues or comments from outside accounts; that a first-time contributor needs manual approval before any workflow starts; that build tokens are read-only; and the name of the person who owns this and the date it was last checked.
Five answers, one page, filed beside the contract. A developer who cannot answer them has told you something worth knowing.
The pricing under every business subscription is flipping from seats to tasks. ServiceNow lost 25% of its value in a day on that fear, and Oracle now bills AI units on top of subscriptions. Vendors defend margins on the invoice you sign, so read the meter before the first surprise bill does.
Microsoft booked $36.6bn of profit on $92.3bn of revenue in the quarter to September, up 19%, and Azure grew 48%. Days earlier it offered buyouts to around 60,000 staff, more than a quarter of its workforce, the BBC reports.
So what: before your next Microsoft renewal this quarter, get your named support contact and a response-time commitment in writing, because the people behind the ticket just took the offer.
Oracle wants the AI task on the invoice
Oracle told investors it will add usage-based charges on top of subscriptions: the more AI work its software does, the more AI units a customer consumes, per The Register. It is chasing a $225bn revenue goal for 2030 against $90bn-plus of capex and rising debt. So what: at your next renewal this quarter, ask which line items are metered in AI units and what one unit costs.
Chrome will read your Gmail to fill a form
Chrome's enhanced autofill now pulls order numbers, tracking details, membership IDs and flight confirmations straight out of Gmail and drops them into web forms, The Verge reports. Fine on a personal laptop. On a shared front-desk machine, the next person at the keyboard inherits the last customer's details. So what: this week, open Chrome settings on every shared computer and switch autofill off.
Two of every three workers are doing the minimum
Gallup's measure of US employee engagement fell to 29% in the third quarter, the lowest since 2011, with the drop concentrated among remote and hybrid staff, CNBC reports. Disengaged teams do not announce themselves: they stop flagging problems. So what: this week, ask your three longest-serving staff in writing what they stopped raising because nothing happened, and read the answers before Monday.
This week's question: a candidate used AI on the take-home task. Do we mark that against them? No. You asked for work, not typing. Score the output against the rubric, then ask them to walk you through one decision they made and one they rejected. Anyone can produce a clean answer with a model and nobody can explain a choice they did not make. If the explanation is thin, the candidate is thin. Run that before your next interview and the test stays honest.
When a vendor raises your price at renewal, what do you actually do?
A. Pay and stay
B. Get a second quote
C. Cut seats or features
D. Replace the tool
Reply with one letter — results next issue.
Microsoft is selling US bonds for the first time since 2017 to pay for AI. How much is it trying to raise?
Answer tomorrow — and no, we are not printing it here.
YESTERDAY'S ANSWER
TechCrunch keeps a running list of the AI startups and projects that did not make it. What is that list called?
The AI graveyard, a running list of AI projects and startups that shut down (TechCrunch, https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/24/the-ai-graveyard-a-running-list-of-projects-and-startups-that-didnt-make-it/).
About 5 minutes to read. One thing you can use today every issue.
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