Ideas

Shy away from questions that can be easily answered by a few minutes of reading the company’s website

Answer by Edmond Lau, Engineer at Quip, on Quora.

“What questions can I answer for you?” I asked the interview candidate. We had finished working through some technical problems, and I was ready to gauge his curiosity and passion toward the product, the team, and the mission.

“I don’t really have any,” he replied.

Apparently, he already knew all there was to know about the company after a couple of interviews, and there was nothing more I could add. It was the weakest reply he could’ve given if he wanted to show excitement for the job, and yet, he wasn’t the only smart person I’ve interviewed who’s given that response.

I’ve interviewed roughly 500 people in the past eight years, across Google, Ooyala, and Quora, mostly for engineering positions, but also for positions in management, data science, and product. In nearly every interview, I offer candidates a chance to turn the tables and grill me on questions.

The strongest candidates respond with curiosity. They want to know what the company culture is like, how teams go about shipping projects, what challenges the product faces in the marketplace, what aspects of the work environment can be improved, and what’s being done about them. They would fill the entire interview with questions if I let them. They’re not just looking for objective answers — they’re also curious about how my viewpoints differ from those of other interviewers.

The weaker candidates mistakenly assume that answering the technical questions correctly is all that matters in an interview. That’s important, but technical competence is just the table stakes. Interviewers adopt a much more holistic view of someone’s interview performance.

It’s not hard to understand why — if I’m going to be working with you for 40+ hours per week, whether you can figure out the correct answers to problems we might encounter is only one factor out of many. I’m also evaluating:

• How well you handle feedback or criticism.
• How quickly you can reason about a problem.
• Whether you’d be a good culture fit for the team.
• What gets you excited about the mission and the product.
• How well you communicate.
• Whether we can work through hard problems together.
• Whether your skill set complements what we already have on the team.

When interviewing for a job, don’t think in terms of the fraction of questions you can answer correctly — that alone won’t differentiate you from the rest of the applicant pool. Instead, focus on all the various ways that you can add value to the team and how you can effectively communicate that value to your interviewers.

Maximize the Signal-To-Noise Ratio

In an interview, you only have 30 minutes to an hour to impress your interviewer. And the more value that you can convey per minute in the interview, the more likely you are to succeed and get the job.

As an interviewer, I optimize for questions with a high signal-to-noise ratio, ones that reveal a large amount of useful information (signal) about the candidate per minute spent, with little irrelevant or useless data (noise). I’ll spend some time firing away questions to probe a wide surface area, hone in on any warning flags, and spend energy guiding the flow of the interview whenever we hit an area with diminishing returns.

Interviewing, however, is an imperfect science. And as an interview candidate, you can increase your chances by nudging interactions in the right direction. If you want to distinguish yourself from the other 99% of applicants, your guiding principle should be to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio of your interactions with recruiters and interviewers.

That principle carries throughout the interview process, starting from your application. Jobvite provides recruiting software to its customers, and according to one analysis conducted across 600+ customers, only 7% of job applicants come from referrals, and yet referrals account for 40% of total hires. [1] [2] The conversion rate from referrals is so high because having someone (or a connection of someone) on the team vouch that you’ve been awesome to work with in the past provides a much higher signal than a few hours of interviews. Your resume is likely to get fast-tracked rather than just sit on the pile, waiting to be discovered. Given the value of a referral, if you don’t know anyone at the company, it’s worth trying to go through a friend, a friend of a friend, LinkedIn, Quora, or any other network to make the initial introduction.

Once you’ve secured an interview, the signal-to-noise ratio guides your interview mechanics. Sharing your thought process as you’re working through a problem, for example, is valuable because you convey a non-zero amount of signal to your interviewer. I get to learn how you reason through problems, how well you communicate, and which parts you excel at or struggle with — signals that I wouldn’t get by watching you pensively stare off into space.

The principle should also guide the tools you use to tackle interview problems. Someone asked on Quora a while back whether interviewers frowned on candidates who use Python or Ruby to solve interview questions. Seen from the perspective of maximizing the signal-to-noise ratio, it’s easy to understand why using Python or Ruby might actually be preferred.

Languages like C, C++, or Java tend to be significantly more verbose than more productive languages like Python or Ruby that come with more powerful built-in primitives like list comprehensions, lambda expressions, or destructuring assignment. Research by Prechelt compared 80 implementations of the same set of requirements across 7 different languages and found that solutions written in C, C++, and Java were on average 2-3x longer in terms of non-comment lines of code than scripting languages like Python. [3] Most candidates I’ve interviewed who code in C, C++, or Java therefore start out at a disadvantage — they need 2-3x the amount of time to convey the same information as someone who uses Ruby or Python. Each minute spent writing boilerplate code for a less productive language is a minute not spent tackling the meatier aspects of a problem and not conveying useful signals to the interviewer.

There are exceptions, of course. If you’re interviewing for a position that involves kernel programming, low-level systems, or iOS and Android development, you might convey more signal by using a language like C, C++, Objective C, or Java because it’s more similar to what you’d be doing on the job. At a more established tech company where code is written in C, C++, or Java, the ability to use one of the company’s standard languages may also provide a signal that interviewers care about. Ultimately, your choice of programming language, like any other decisions during your interview, is important to the extent that it affects the speed with which you can solve problems and provide the interviewer with useful signal.

Assuming you’ve handled the technical questions well, the signal-to-noise ratio also explains why it’s important to ask your interviewer questions. Asking good questions is one of the few opportunities you have to demonstrate your curiosity and excitement for the team and the product and to signal what you actually care about in a job.

What to Ask Your Interviewer

So what questions should you ask your interviewer when it’s your turn to grill him or her on questions?

Shy away from questions that can be easily answered by a few minutes of Googling, reading the company’s website, or using the product (if it’s a consumer product). Those types of questions signal laziness. If the company builds a web or mobile consumer product, you should have done your homework and already tried out the product prior to the interview – it still surprises me how often I’ve interviewed candidates who never even tried out the product they’d be working on and yet expect that they’d be able to get the job.

Instead, focus on questions that the interviewer can uniquely help you to answer. For example, you might ask them to help paint the picture of what working at the company is like:

• What’s your typical work day like?
• What’s the process of taking an idea you have from an inception and shipping it to production?
• What fraction of your time is spent building new things versus maintaining old ones?
• How do product/business/engineering decisions get made at the company?

Or focus on the team culture:

• What’s one thing you really like about working at the company and one thing you’d like to improve? What’s being done about the thing you’d like to improve?
• What are the core values of the company, and what are some examples of how they’re reflected day-to-day?
• How would you describe the culture of the company?

Or dive deeply into one aspect of the product that you’re curious about:

• How did this particular product feature get designed and launched?
• Why did you decide to launch this particular version instead of this other one?
• How has the product evolved since launch based on user feedback?

Or ask about growth opportunities:

• What’s the most unexpected lesson that you’ve learned on the job?
• What is the onboarding or mentoring process like (if any) for new hires?
• What opportunities have you had to work with different people and projects during your time at the company?
• How is knowledge across projects documented and shared at the company?

Or learn about the challenges that the company is facing:

• What are the biggest obstacles to this company becoming massively successful?
• What are the current priorities and focus areas at the company?
• Where would I be able to add the most value?

Given the endless array of questions, the next time someone asks you if you have any questions in an interview, be prepared with an answer other than “no.” Ask ones that can provide you with a lot of signal, as they’ll also signal to your interviewer that you’re thinking hard about the opportunity.

This question originally appeared on Quora: What should one say when the interviewer asks “Do you have any questions for me?”

Marty Nemko holds a Ph.D. specializing in education evaluation from U.C. Berkeley.

How to attract and vet for the best employees

Pat was well-qualified for the job. So, without puffery, her resume, cover letter, interview and references made that clear.

Chris wasn’t qualified for the job but wanted it, so hired a professional resume writer who not only sanitized his job history as much as possible but made Chris look far more intelligent, organized and detail-oriented than is true. A job coach gave Chris model answers for likely interview questions and then, on video, pointed out when the delivery didn’t seem credible. (For free, the government also often provides resume and interview coaching, including video.) Having been fired from the previous jobs for incompetence, laziness and lack of ethics, Chris had no legitimate good references and so pressured his Uncle Al to pretend to be Chris’s former boss so that when a prospective employer called for a reference, Uncle Al would say, “Chris was a fabulous employee.”

It’s probably rare that someone uses all those deceptions, but too often the Chrises of the world get the job over Pats. When this happens, it’s devastating not just to the Pats but to society. Hiring a Chris in the private sector means the goods and services we buy and pay for are worse. When the government hires Chrises, it means that everything from education to police is compromised.

Employers could do far better when it comes to hiring. Here’s how.

Outreach

Wise employers realize that it’s safer to hire someone referred by an employee or friend because they’re unlikely to recommend someone bad. There’s greater risk in hiring an unknown.

But many employers ill-advisedly focus on unknowns by placing job ads. A report by CareerXroads, a consultancy to corporations on hiring, found that in 2013, 34.5% of hiring by the 250 large companies surveyed came from career sites and job boards. Ads often poorly describe what’s required of an employee. A wise employer, if using an ad, will list only the job’s central and difficult requirements. That results in clearer, fairer communication with job seekers. Also, an ad should post a salary range—for example, “$85,000-$100,000 depending on the candidate’s qualifications.”

Employers should think twice about requiring a degree. Yes, a degree is an objective criterion but too often a invalid one. Sometimes, the boldest thinkers and self-starters are those who decided that the years and cost of the degree would be more wisely spent outside the halls of academe. The wise employer doesn’t automatically exclude such candidates.

The application

Require all applicants to take an online test that simulates the job’s difficult, important tasks. To reduce cheating, applicants would be informed that the interview will include a parallel exam, proctored. That is typically a far more valid screening criterion than a cover letter or resume, which could have been ghost-written.

The wise employer might want to not require a resume. Even if the candidate doesn’t use a hired gun, aggregations of survey results by Statistic Brain and Grad School Hub show that a large percentage of resumes contain misleading information or outright lies. Remember, too, that excellent candidates may not be actively looking for a job. They’re well employed and don’t need to spend the time developing a resume. If they saw a job opening that was appealing and it didn’t require the hours it takes to create a resume, they might be more inclined to apply.

Ban professionally written resumes. As mentioned earlier, even if professional resume writers don’t stretch the truth, they often make candidates seem like better thinkers and writers and more organized and detail-oriented than they are. Those attributes are key to a large percentage of white-collar jobs. Resume writers claim that it’s ethical to write someone else’s resume. If so, why don’t they write, “Written by John Jones, professional resume writer”? For the benefit of the job seekers who want to do their own work, including the poor that can’t afford to hire a resume writer–as well as for employers who want the right person for the job, and for society, which benefits when the right people for the job are hired–employers would be wise to prohibit resumes crafted by professional resume writers or require that its author be acknowledged.

The interview(s)

It’s a mistake to ask questions that applicants could reasonably anticipate, such as “Tell me about yourself,” “Why the employment gaps?” “What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses” and “What project are you proudest of and least proud of and what did you learn from that?” Because such questions are so common, there’s a fair chance the interviewee is spewing a scripted answer found in an interviewing guide or provided by a job coach.

After the proctored job-simulation exam, the interview should consist mainly of actual simulations of difficult, common tasks in that job. For example, if it’s a candidate for a managerial position, you might ask the candidate to run a meeting. Or say, “Pretend I’m your supervisee and my work is of poor quality and my work ethic is bad. Role play that meeting.”

Requiring more than two, maximum three, interviews, is likely to turn off strong candidates. And it’s too demanding of candidates’ and employees’ time. The simulation-centric exam and two simulation-centric interviews with key stakeholders should be enough.

Don’t skip the background check. With the amount of deception in applications, a background check is essential. Thanks to the online availability of so much data, a professional background checking service can, at low cost, verify much of what’s stated on the application plus other key factors, for example, if s/he is on the list of registered sex offenders.

Reference checks. For fear of a lawsuit, many employers will only verify dates of employment and whether the person left voluntarily. Alas, even the latter may not be trustworthy because, to get a bad employee to leave without suing, the employer may have agreed to tell subsequent employers that the employee left voluntarily.

But it’s still worth trying to get a meaningful reference. Do it by phone rather than by email. The tone with which an employer says, “She left voluntarily” can speak volumes. Do try to get more than that. One way is to make your request in a human way, for example, “The person I hire will work closely with me. It’s really important I get someone competent, hard-working, ethical, low-maintenance and kind. Do you think I’ll be happy with this person?” Again, the reference may not say a lot but you can learn a lot from tone.

The hiring decision. It’s wise to base your decision more on intelligence and drive than on degrees and experience. A person could be great at school and lousy in the workplace. He could have 20 years of experience, but have been a low-quality employee for those 20 years. It’s much easier to teach skills than to increase someone’s intelligence and drive.

Responding to applicants.

Too often, employers don’t even give applicants the dignity of a rejection letter, leaving them hanging indefinitely. And candidates deserve a rejection letter that’s more helpful than, “We’ve had many qualified applicants.” Candidates put much time and emotional energy into applying. They deserve at least a bit of brief honest feedback.

Too often, when employers give feedback, they don’t give the real reason but something hard to argue with like, “You’re overqualified,” “We wanted someone with more direct experience” or “We chose someone with a master’s degree,” when in fact if the candidate showed better reasoning skills, drive, technical expertise or ethics, she would have been hired.

Honest feedback benefits both candidates and society. Imagine how much growth to people and society would accrue from simply giving all rejected candidates a bit of honest feedback. Yes, giving the true reason(s) you rejected them may result in some of them arguing with you, but that seems a small price to pay.

The upshot

In sum, the proposed model is simple: get your pool of applicants by referral, not ads; screen them using simulation rather than the cheat-prone resume, cover letter and interview questions; and treat all applicants with respect: not too many interviews and prompt, honest feedback to unsuccessful applicants.

That model requires less time while increasing the likelihood of a worthy person being hired. That serves not only employees and employers, but all of us.

Marty Nemko holds a Ph.D. specializing in education evaluation from U.C. Berkeley and subsequently taught there. He is the author of seven books and an award-winning career coach, writer, speaker and public radio host specializing in career/workplace issues and education reform. His writings and radio programs are archived on www.martynemko.com.

Read next: 3 Most Important Things to Know When You’re Hiring Somebody

Facebook is ubiquitous, and it is an easily accessible and common search engine

Answer by Adam Nash, President & CEO of Wealthfront, on Quora.

You might find this answer surprising, especially from a former executive at LinkedIn (I’m currently the CEO at Wealthfront). But the short answer is, yes, in many cases, there is a professional necessity for Facebook.

Let me first get my obvious bias out of the way. As one of the people who had a hand in building out LinkedIn, I truly believe that there is a valuable and natural separation between your professional identity and your personal identity. As a result, I would counsel any professional to take great care in how they present themselves on LinkedIn.

However, Facebook is ubiquitous, and it is an easily accessible and common search engine for people. It is well indexed in search engines like Google.

Chances are, if someone is looking for information about you, as a professional, they will definitely see your LinkedIn profile. There is also a strong chance they will end up looking for your Facebook profile as well.

Why?

A few reasons really:

• Completeness. It’s easily accessible and fairly common. It feels like a reasonable part of due diligence.
• Curiosity. Facebook plays strongly to our curiosity to know more about people. The fact that there is a strong personal/professional split can make people distinctly curious about your split.
• Psychographics. Whether correct or incorrect, by looking at your social behavior on sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or Pinterest, other professionals may believe they can get a better sense of who you are as a person.
• Transparency. Finding a Facebook profile reassures others that you have “nothing to hide.” In a world where Facebook is ubiquitous, not finding a profile or not finding sufficient information may inadvertently beg questions.

Facebook offers quite a few tools to control privacy and sharing. A few recommendations to consider:

• Tightly Control Your Public Profile on Facebook. To the extent you can, make sure your public profile on Facebook (including public shares and photos) are carefully curated to present the image you would be comfortable with a business partner or colleague seeing. This doesn’t mean hiding your humanity, but it likely means publishing only a limited amount that frames who you are.
• Don’t Make Personal Squabbles Public. Too many times, relatively well-behaved adults present a poor version of themselves when they get into arguments in the comments on Facebook posts, not realizing those comments appear on a public share of a friend. My advice? From a career perspective, save arguments for private messages and other communication. Assume that every comment you make on a Facebook share could be public.
• Watch for inconsistency. When people view multiple social profiles, inconsistency (or worse, hypocrisy) tends to stand out. Presenting yourself as serious and hard-working on LinkedIn, while portraying an active and wild night-life on Facebook will beg questions.

As a final note, Facebook is most useful professionally as an alternate messaging platform for close friends & colleagues. We live in a world where many people split their attention across too many communication channels.

As a result, I now know people who only reliably respond to text messages, answering in minutes where an email will sit unanswered for days. I know people who only respond to DMs on Twitter, or messages on WhatsApp. I also know people who only respond reliably to messages on Facebook.

So if your goal is fast and efficient communication, it’s worth having a channel to your friends and colleagues who prefer Facebook (even if you don’t.)

Necessity is a strong word. You can obviously succeed professionally without Facebook. However, I would argue that using Facebook effectively has distinct value as a professional and there are situations where it can be considered a necessity.

This question originally appeared on Quora: Professional Networking: Is there a professional necessity for Facebook?

Building a network of effective relationships

Answer by Balaji Viswanathan on Quora.

Basic Skills

These are things everyone needs to master, regardless of their roles.

1. Listening: This is one of the foundation skills most of us never really master. Listening is fundamental to learning and maintaining relationships. 8 Ways to Master the Art of Effective Listening
2. Observation: How good are you in paying a close attention to the world around you? Knowledge relies on observation. Without a keen sense of observation, it is hard to move up in any career path. Gain an edge by improving your observation skills
3. Writing: Most often people send me resumes and cover letters with horrible structure. They get instantly tossed out. It is sad that while 12 years of schooling stress so much on writing, most of us still don’t pay attention to mastering it.
4. Networking: Building a network of effective relationships is an amazing skill. Networking is not about partying with a whole lot of classmates. It is about building a professional relationship with a diverse group of people & making meaningful connections. It involves understanding people, remembering their needs and connecting them with the right people. Networking Is Not Working: Stop Collecting Business Cards and Start Making Meaningful Connections.
5. Presentation: Can you present an idea well? It involves both speaking skills as well as the art of simplifying things. Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery
6. Read & follow instructions: This is another skill that we seem to be completely losing. Can you read a manual and follow instructions?

Specialized Skills

1. Sales: Are you the kind of person who can understand a product, connect with the right customer, build trust and convince them to do the right thing? Sales is an amazing skill to have [and a high paying one too] and the master entrepreneurs — Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were fine salesmen. If you are still in college, start selling something. Keep refining this art.
2. Design: Can you design things in a way it makes things logical as well as aesthetically pleasing? If you have an eye for design, you could learn User Interface. At a time when companies are competing on design and delivery, it would be an amazing thing to have.
3. Systems Engineering: Are you very hands-on in IT and can fix things? Do you have the patience to read through the manual and try out different solutions? Enterprise IT departments are always hiring.

There are hundreds of such skills — ranging from physical therapy to financial analysis that still pay a lot. Start from this page: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Use the controls at the top and play around with the parameters. Click through specific career paths. Although the jobs are US centric, the skill sets are broadly applicable.

This question originally appeared on Quora: Are there skills other than coding that I can learn to get a good salary job?

Listen and ask questions

Answer by Mira Zaslove on Quora.

The best way to handle criticism depends on the type of criticism. And who it’s coming from.

Generally, there are 3 types of criticism. The way you handle the feedback will depend upon the situation. And your temprament.

1. Constructive feedback

When starting something new, you will inevitably get feedback. And if you are asking the right people, some feedback will be negative. People who are knowledgeable and care about you, will be honest. And the more they know, the more negative they may seem. It’s hard to do, but listen. It’s much better to deal with criticism early, when you can do something about it, rather than later, when it may be too late.

Also, people who only flatter you, are not helping. If your idea has an obvious and fixable hole, and someone tells you it’s flawless, their positive feedback is hurting you. Surround yourself with people who test your ideas. Don’t only listen to people who tell you what you want to hear. Pleasant “yes men” are more dangerous than the jerk who tells you the brutal truth you need to hear.

How to handle constructive criticism

Listen and ask questions. It may not be what you want to hear, but be open. If they don’t like the idea, ask them bluntly, “what do you think can be improved?”

If you don’t agree with the criticism, tell them you appreciate their candor. Then tell them you need some time to think about what they said. Then quickly move on. Don’t get defensive.

2. Jealousy

If you’re doing something big, people will be jealous. The bigger you aim, the harder they may want you to fail. If you are threatening someone or the status quo, jealous people will be aggressive, unpleasant, and negative. They want you to quit.

How to handle jealousy

Try not to talk to this person. If they are family, or someone you have to deal with, change the subject. Don’t sweat their negativity. Zone out. When they talk, act like you are listening. But think about something else.

Jealous people will sap your energy. Their goal is to distract you–so don’t let them. Don’t waste your time arguing with them, or fueling their fire. You need to keep focused on what matters.

Many people say not to take criticism personally. This is easier said than done, especially when you are trying to create something new. One way that many help is to imagine yourself as a 3rd party looking in on the situation. You may find yourself less biased if you try to remove yourself from the situation—even if temporarily.

3. Haters going to hate

Some people are just negative. They enjoy playing devil’s advocate. And no matter what you do, they will criticize. Wouldn’t you rather be hated for a big idea, rather then your choice of clothing?

How to handle haters
Passively agree with them! Haters want a fight, so don’t give it to them. If they bring up something negative, say “you have a point.” Then shut up. They want a debate, so don’t give it to them. Haters are just wired that way, and it has nothing to do with you.

This question originally appeared on Quora: What is the best way to handle negative criticism?

Rachel Kramer Bussel is a New Jersey-based writer on sex, dating, books and pop culture.

It's her raison d’être

Kim Kardashian’s dual covers of the new issue of Paper magazine, with their mission to “Break the Internet,” and accompanying frontal nude photos inside, have put her exactly where she wants to be: on the world’s center stage, a position she’s managed to occupy in a unique way since her sex tape scandal in 2007.

Kardashian has never shied away from the spotlight, or her love of it; she even had stardom in mind as a 13-year-old. Rather than hate on her for her it, I can’t help but admire her devotion to it. She went from living in Paris Hilton’s shadow to becoming a household name and a brand that has netted her an estimated $45 million fortune, according to Wealth-X, a firm specializing in high net worth individuals.

Becoming the kind of star who attracts attention for doing anything and nothing at all isn’t easy in a 24-hour news cycle, where new reality stars are constantly being minted. Kardashian knows that, and is in it for the long haul. She’s willing to literally bare all, but also poke fun at herself by, say, getting her butt X-ray to convince us that her cheeks are real. She’s managed to transcend her sex tape origins to emerge as someone able to sell whatever version of herself she chooses, alternating seamlessly between romantic wife, doting mother, devoted sister and teetotaling but still fun party girl.

These photos arrive at a time when other female celebrities are fighting back against stolen nude images, and, in the case of Keira Knightley, Photoshopped images of female nudity. But Kardashian has no such concerns, which is refreshing in its own way. She is not trying to make a political statement about women and nudity or about race. Being famous and keeping herself and her family famous are her raison d’être, one she’s willing to go to almost any lengths for. After all, getting naked was her brainchild, according to Paper’s editorial director Mickey Boardman, and has kept her in the headlines for two days.

Kardashian plays with her sexuality, and the public’s fascination with her body, accordingly. She steps out in the kind of outfit most of us would never dare to, baring her breasts in a blazer while pushing a stroller. Part of why I’ve been hooked on Kim Kardashian is because she truly does not seem to care what others think of her, as long as we’re paying attention. And that’s what this shoot is all about.

Though we’ve seen Kardashian naked before, we haven’t seen her like this. She’s offering us an over-the-top vision of her post-baby body, one many have claimed has been Photoshopped, though makeup artist Mario Dedivanovic promises is the result of “just oil and great lighting.” Kardashian is forcing us to look at her, but there’s nothing subservient about her in these images. Instead she is staring back with a smile, in on the joke, gleeful not just to be taking off her clothes but to be the object of the camera’s eye. Nudity is bringing her power, not taking it away.

Photographer Jean-Paul Goude’s images of one of the most-photographed women in the world are meant to stop us in our tracks, to look, and look again. It’s pure fantasy, and I’m okay with that, because I consider the entire Kardashian empire a fantasy. Kardashian, and her entire clan, are playing the fame game flawlessly.

As Amanda Fortini writes in Paper, “She’s not performing, that is — at least not visibly. She is being, and being is her act. Her appeal derives from her uncanny consistency, as does that of her show.” To read one Kim Kardashian profile is to have pretty much read them all. Even those skeptical of or disturbed by her success find themselves captivated, admitting, at the very least, that she’s a marketing genius. This latest publicity coup has only cemented her power. Even corporations like Nissan and Southwest hitched a ride on the #BreaktheInternet hashtag. Not to mention the storm of think pieces the photos launched.

No, Kardashian isn’t out to change the world, though she has undoubtedly changed the nature of what it means to be a celebrity. I don’t care whether the images have been altered or not. These are glamour photos, meant to showcase a superstar, not a set of instructions to follow at home. That’s why Chelsea Handler’s mocking them with her own bare ass fell flat. “Real” is not what we expect from Kardashian, nor what we would probably want. We follow Kardashian because she does things we wouldn’t do, like wear outrageously cleavage-baring tops in public or throw a kidchella birthday party for a one-year-old. Plus, even though she clearly takes the business of being herself seriously, she can also laugh at herself and at others laughing along with her.

Unlike the chorus of voices wondering why Kardashian doesn’t do more than pose for still and rolling cameras, I am perfectly fine letting myself be entranced by her ability to keep upping the ante. I don’t need to know the “real” Kim to find the reality Kim worth keeping up with.

Rachel Kramer Bussel is a New Jersey-based writer on sex, dating, books and pop culture. She teaches erotic writing workshops, pens the Let’s Get It On column for Philadelphia City Paper and is the editor of over 50 erotica anthologies such as Hungry for More and The Big Book of Submission.

Steve Friess is a freelance writer.

The sticker shock of giving Jack another year made the discussion almost academic

It took longer than expected to realize something was wrong. Jack has always been so thin that I often soothingly trace the outline of his ribs with my fingers as I fall asleep. But we’d never really worried about it because he always ate as much as he wanted, enjoyed treats galore and remained around a healthy 11 pounds.

So I shrugged when my partner suggested he seemed leaner than usual. When Jack became a bit harder to rouse from naps on my office sofa or his dog bed, I reasoned that cooler weather often made him sluggish. But in late October, after weighing myself on the scale, I picked him up to see the difference. He had whittled to less than 8 pounds.

Three days later, our vet was drawing blood and aspirating lymph nodes that had enlarged under his jowls to the size and shape of Raisinets. Jack was diagnosed with, to quote the email I received with the various results, “Lymphoma, large cell, high-grade type.” Below that was this: “All lymph nodes are prominent. There is a remarkably high mitotic rate.” Translation: Jack has an aggressive cancer coursing throughout his body.

A childhood friend who is now a vet tried to provide hope by urging us to “do the full chemo protocol ASAP!” That could send Jack into remission for “usually 9 to 12 months. However, they can live longer if they have good remission.”

So this was the beginning. My friend did not intend to give us a guilt trip, and neither did our vet when she laid out the same options. But I nonetheless felt shameful as I asked the question that would determine our answer: How much will it cost?

Yes, I was concerned about the impact of chemotherapy on this lovely creature, but all of my research had convinced me that the debilitating nausea and hair loss familiar as side effects in humans don’t usually occur in dogs. In theory, aside from the stress this already nervous little animal would face going in weekly for his drip, it might not be so bad.

But as much as we love our pets, the sticker shock made the rest of the discussion almost academic. The process would cost, at the least, $5,000.

My partner and I are trying to adopt a baby – a human! – and $5,000 gets us about a third of the way there. If that $5,000 could cure the cancer and restore Jack’s full life expectancy, maybe we’d do it. Maybe. It certainly would be a tougher choice. But to buy a year during which we’d be waiting for his lymph nodes to resume their swell? We could endure the end stages either now or later.

We are opting for now, which means we have about 30 days. The end will probably come in time for holidays already shrouded in gloom because of the unexpected loss this year of my mother-in-law. It feels macabrely efficient to ruin just one otherwise festive season rather than string this out and feel this way next year, too.

We’ve received a lot of advice, both solicited and unwelcome, through social media. Nobody comes right out to say it, but the disappointment some express at our decision shows that they question our love for Jack. In an era when people spend big on animal clothes, artisanal foods and medical intervention, and when medical science makes it possible to spend $5,000 so Jack dies slightly later than sooner, there is pressure to go as far as we can.

We’re just too practical for that. Three years ago, Jack was diagnosed with a heart murmur during a routine exam, so we saw a cardiac vet who urged a battery of expensive tests. Armed with advice and courage from vet-author Dr. Nancy Kay’s book Speaking for Spot, I asked about treatment options. Turned out, as the vet reluctantly conceded using jargon I had to repeat back to him in English to be clear, there weren’t any. The murmur would grow gradually louder, then Jack’s heart would fail. Until the end, he’d be unaware and in no distress. When I declined the exams, the vet barely hid his dismay, an exchange that left me with a burble of guilt ever since. Now I feel, strangely, doubly vindicated.

Jack’s cancer, we’re told, is moving wickedly fast. Those Raisinets will soon be grapes, interfering with swallowing, breathing and gastrointestinal functions. There are diet adjustments that might forestall this a bit, and we’re doing that. An oral steroid might slow the cancer, but it also induces incessant peeing. Jack, in normal times, has always told us he needed to go out by trembling. Adding to even more of that anxiety hardly seems wise or humane, so we won’t do that, either. When he’s uncomfortable and there’s nothing palliative left to do, we will end his life.

And, all in all, it has been a lovely little life. We found our dogs whimpering in a cage at the Nevada Humane Society in 2005 with the sign, “Brothers. Must Adopt Together.” The black one was always friendly and cheerful; the brown one was naturally grouchy and suspicious, growling and twisting straight through our first meeting. Their names, Cheech and Chong, didn’t suit them; they would be Black and Jack, my partner decided as we crossed the Las Vegas Strip on our way home.

Their prior owner had trapped them in an apartment bathroom for hours a day before mercifully surrendering them to adoption, so I am the only human either of them has ever fully trusted. Black has mellowed, but Jack still growls if my partner tries to hold my hand when he’s in my lap. Jack is, undeniably, “my” dog; while I half-heartedly scold him for his recalcitrance towards his other owner, I secretly revel in the exclusivity of our little club.

I don’t want to lose Jack. I look at him, still relatively normal, and find it impossible to believe the speed and finality of what is to come. I put aside my book or iPad more often now so I can return his Nancy Reagan gazes, trying to record in my mind the feeling of caressing his silken little ears.

To be a pet owner these days means inevitably exposing one’s self to varying helpings of guilt at every stage. Breeder or shelter? Crate, dogwalker or doggie day care? Treat the disease or let him die?

But I don’t want to feel guilty. We will have enough emotions to contend with. We’re going to brace ourselves and then we will grieve. It’s going to be a crappy time. But we believe this is the right choice. You may not. That’s fine. We won’t judge you, so don’t judge us.

Steve Friess is the co-host of the podcast The Petcast, which will return from hiatus in 2015.