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Comment by kccqzy | Hacker News Reader

> When local Engineering Manager Tiana Newbauer-Hampton sees the issue play out in her corporate environment, she says that a simple “let me finish my thought” usually does the trick.

This is exactly what I find useful. When men interrupt women, it's usually not because of an intention to discriminate, to devalue what the women are about to say, or to express disapproval of the women. It's simply an unconscious action. There is no ill will. This is the reason why women can prevent the interruption just by saying "let me finish my thought" or even just by ignoring the interruption and keep on talking.

I wish more women did this. This will subconsciously let everyone know interrupting is not okay.

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Interruption isn't inherently bad. Lots of conversations go like:

Person A: "If the system's going to be configured with option X-"

Person B: "We just heard we're definitely going with option Y"

Person A: "Oh thanks, so.."

Nobody is served by person A going on that tangent with a false assumption, so a quick interruption is fine.

Of course needless or rude interruptions are bad. Maybe part of this should be that women should be made to feel more comfortable giving necessary interruptions like in my example.

This happened to me very recently. It was a meeting with five people and I asked for some information. But when she started answering I realized I had phrased my question poorly, and as a result she wasn't really addressing my actual concerns. When I tried to interrupt to clarify my question, she slightly raised her voice to drown me out.

So when she concluded her explanation I had to go "sorry, what I actually meant to ask was ...".

That's where a well placed "Hold on" plus an accompanying hand gesture can come in handy. It's a brief enough interruption to get through and be heard, while also being understood as "what you're saying is not what was asked/intended, allow me to clarify".

As a soft spoken male I get interrupted all the time, usually not for efficiency. There's rarely been an interruption where I personally thought it was justified.

The interruptions for clarification and false assumption are not the interruptions OP is talking about. In the example given, person B does not try to actively take control of the conversation, just quickly inserts a correction and allows person A to continue. So there's no need for persona A to say "let me finish my thought".

It's not that women should be made to feel more comfortable giving these soft types of interruptions... it isn't that hard to correct someone's factual mistakes. It's that interruptions are used by dominant people as a political tool to assert hierarchies and for control. Women do it too, it's not a gender issue but I can imagine it more difficult in gender imbalanced teams and with gender stereotypes in play.

In my opinion if a person has to say "can you let me finish my thought" the interruption is never justified. Even if someone is rambling or mistaken, there are better ways to deal with that - for instance, asking them to be more concise in their presentation of their point. Being proud of a culture of interruption is admitting politics is how you make your decisions and how your team works together.

Sounds like you're a church of interruption person. Whereas this advice is about teaching women to go from meek to church of strong civility.

https://sambleckley.com/writing/church-of-interruption.html

I wouldn't subscribe to the more constant interruption the people in the story use, but overall I guess so.

I wonder if it's worth also observing how often men would interrupt other men, and see if the men are actually interrupting the women with a greater frequency.

Yes, men interrupt each other frequently for efficiency, and (if we like each other) we constantly insult or "mess with" each other, as an evolved system of decision checks within a team.

But we're no longer on single gender hunting teams or war parties. I think it's good that life has gotten so easy that progress today means dealing with feelings related issues as a society.

You have quite a few interesting assumptions within that comment:

1) Does interrupting generally increase or decrease communication efficiency.

2) Do males interrupt more? (I believe you are right about this as I recall some studies)

3) Should we optimize for dealing with feelings rather than efficiency? For example: Will the decreased efficiency result in more lost lives due to a delayed cure for cancer or heart disease?

See, for example, table 1 of the study in question

https://www.virginialawreview.org/sites/virginialawreview.or...

Indeed. However, note how small the sample size is, which makes it extremely difficult to draw conclusions. Quote from p14:

> Finally, we considered the possibility that seniority may be at play and that gender simply coincides with seniority. We recognized that two of the three female Justices, Justice Kagan and Justice Sotomayor, are more junior on the Court and that each is interrupted far more frequently than Justice Ginsburg. In addition, Table 1 provides some provisional support for the seniority hypothesis because of the most senior Justices - Ginsburg, Kennedy, Scalia, and Breyer — only Ginsburg and Breyer are interrupted at high rates. In contrast, the more junior Justices — Kagan, Sotomayor, and Alito — account for the other seven high interruption rates.

As I said, "for example" -- it's a 118-page paper that contains much more than that single table. Which, by the way, summarizes a full year of oral arguments at the supreme court -- not actually a small sample size, but a total dataset.

And yes, there is much nuance in the article, and they do consider and analyze confounding factors, but your cherry-picked quotation seems to indicate a lack of genuine curiosity on your part.

Yes, you did give an example. The quote I referenced is from the discussion in the article of the example you gave - even inside the quote it makes an explicit reference to the table you pointed me to. You're welcome to make another example, but I was specifically responding to the one you gave. That's not cherry-picking, that's a totally relevant counter-example to the one you gave.

> not actually a small sample size, but a total dataset

Guess I didn't articulate super well. That dataset only covers a very small number of people in a very artificial environment - top lawyers dissecting legal matters from opposite sides of almost every spectrum is hardly an environment representative of e.g. general conversation. Sure, there's a lot of observations made over a period of time, but it's observations of only 9 people, which is a really tiny group when you're trying to make any extrapolation at all to the general population, even if the circumstances had been anything approaching normal.

> your cherry-picked quotation seems to indicate a lack of genuine curiosity on your part

Are you trying to make a personal jab, or was that just accidental? Maybe 'interrupting' isn't the only interpersonal (systemic?) abrasion that might need fixing in society...

It's not just a tiny group. It's the most influential group of 9 people at the very top of an egalitarian system of law. Do they represent all of us? No, not perfectly. They should represent the best of us.

One reason that this study exists is that it's a deliberative body with excellent records. It would be great if longitudinal studies of huge populations existed, but that would require ridiculously expensive (and highly invasive) data acquisition.

> It would be great if longitudinal studies of huge populations existed, but...

That's the problem, isn't it. There's so many things we would know if only we had better data. However, until we actually have useful data, we have to simply acknowledge that there is insufficient data to say anything worth saying. To do otherwise is unscientific.

> Which, by the way, summarizes a full year of oral arguments at the supreme court -- not actually a small sample size, but a total dataset.

It's a "total dataset" of the most narrow and small sample size possible. You are being very deceptive here by trying to dismiss the guy's concern over small sample size with "total dataset" as if that compensates for a minuscule sample size. The supreme court ( all nine or so members ) and the oral arguments isn't a sample size worth drawing any objective general conclusions from. You might as well draw general physical conditions of americans based solely on the los angeles lakers.

> And yes, there is much nuance in the article, and they do consider and analyze confounding factors, but your cherry-picked quotation seems to indicate a lack of genuine curiosity on your part.

You are projecting here. The only one who cherrypicked here is you. The guy responded to your cherrypicked data.

Weaker men get often interrupted, the ones who stand for themselves like the parent said, will prevail, no matter what gender. Men are more competitive and dominant, comes from nature.

The Alpha Wolf study has since been discredited, since it was based entirely on wolves in captivity and generally under some degree of external stress. Observations of wild wolves did not observe similar behavior - specifically, they observed that wolf packs are essentially communal decision making oriented with a loose meritocracy - the lead wolf is whichever one is most capable to take on the initiative for a task, and varies from activity to activity. The idea of the "dominant" wolf always being in charge turns out not to be the case, because it's only relevant when the pack believes it's in danger of a fight, in which case they send the largest wolf forward in interactions. That wolf isn't actually in charge of the pack though - it's literally just the favored fighter.

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/no-such-thing-alpha-male-...

Women who demand to be allowed to finish get called unpleasant, gendered names. A man can be "powerful" or "confident", but a woman behaving the same way will be called "bossy" or worse.

And every single time she gets interrupted, she is forced to make a choice: is this the time I'm going to insist and risk getting a reputation for being unpleasant, or am I just going to let it slide because they don't mean it unkindly.

Try this: the next time you see a woman being interrupted, you say, "Hang on, I wanted to hear the rest of that." That not only sends the message that interrupting isn't ok, but it also saves her the effort of making that decision yet again. It's no surprise that they often end up choosing not to, solely as a matter of picking their battles. Ending that unconscious sexism shouldn't just be on them.

I'd like to point out that men also interrupt men, and women interrupt both men and women. Especially nerds. I'm a bit socially awkward, so I can never tell when it is a good time to start speaking. As a result I interrupt other people quite often. It's not intentional, I just don't know any better. I also don't care one iota what genitals you have.

You should not assume malice on the part of your co-workers. Just because someone interrupted you doesn't mean they don't value your input. In the case when it's obvious that they don't, don't hesitate to push back, but in most cases it's not going to be anything of the sort. It's just someone else being socially awkward while trying to wedge themselves into the conversation.

I would say that from my experience (as a woman, who has spoken with other women as the only women on male dominated teams) we don't assume that interruptions are caused by malice. Some interruptions are what I would class "normal" where anyone could be interrupted by a situation/person and some interruptions are what I would class "not actively malicious, but really rude" where people assume that the speaker is not saying what the interrupter would want the speaker to say. Multiple interruptions in a discussion by an individual can show a lack of observance of normal conversational patterns, or a lack of care. It's a fun mix of many reasons, some of which are inadvertently malicious.

When in person, I rarely interrupt. But on Zoom calls, I'm accidentally interrupting all the time. I think it's the slight delay that's the problem. I end up mis-judging when my time to speak is.

Interruptions on video calls are also significantly worse than those that happen in-person, because the presence of a louder person's audio will often completely erase the audio of anyone who was trying to speak at the same time. At least in real-life, you can still catch what the quiet person said amongst the noise if you were paying attention.

I've noticed these interruptions far more from people wearing a wireless headset than those wearing a wired one. The additional latency is significant, especially (but not only) over bluetooth.

If the person forcefully finishing is not making good points, it also teaches the room to be careful about giving them opportunities to speak.

Ultimately meetings become more equitable as the median level of insight and eloquence increases.

Why is it the job of the person who was interrupted to correct the behavior?

Why not the interrupter? Why not somebody else?

With the exception of people who need full time carers, everyone is the prime authority and advocate of their own interests.

It's the interrupted's job to correct the behaviour because they're the one who wants it corrected.

It could be someone else's job as well, but its still going to be the interrupted's job.

More men should do this too.

I've been on plenty of teams where people do this. The biggest negative is when the person speaking is also the type who takes forever to get to their point. I'd say the counter requirement here is that you _need_ to cap speaking times somehow, and the cap needs to be short (say 30s).

Not sure how to let that tie into getting around complex issues, though the idea of other team members having to yield their time to the speaker to continue is probably relevant (I mean let's face it: international diplomacy formalities exist for a reason, to solve problems with significantly higher stakes).

I find that interruptions have nothing to do with gender but with personality and culture. People from Southern Europe constantly interrupt everybody and each other - which btw is also why I think they have to talk so quickly. If you don't get your thought out in time, somebody will interrupt you, whether you are male or female.

It gets better heading towards Central and Northern Europe where it seems like culturally, people interrupt each other less. However then personality plays a bigger role and there are people who just need to insert their opinion right then and there - a pretty annoying trait in either sex, imo.

I wish I could learn how to interrupt people. Often it feels like interruption is the only way I'll ever get a single word in but I feel awful doing it.

Usually I like to wait for a brief pause in the conversation, but with some groups of people such pauses either never come or are so brief I can hardly react fast enough to catch it.

I'm the opposite. I have a bad habit of interrupting others, and find it hard not to.

I would be curious of hearing more about the dynamics of this helps? I have a talk (honestly not a very good one: this was my first virtual talk and I wasn't confident in the topic and I did too much preparation on the tech and not enough on the talk; but this is the best part of the talk) at a conference recently about working from home where I spent some time using interrupting of people as a more in-depth example of cultural crosstalk in action: https://youtu.be/W5PlZqdMR5w. A core thing to appreciate--and there are studies on this from the field of linguistics--is that it takes so long to begin speaking with so many muscles and so much mental effort (in the same way it takes way more time than you would expect to just move your arm, and the studies that show you had to have decided to move your arm before you "thought" you had) that I assure you: no one who is interacting "fluently" in that discussion dynamic is waiting for pauses... they are anticipating (likely automatically, with no conscious processing or anxiety about it) the end of someone else's thought and are just better at the prediction or better at aborting the process if they are wrong (or imply are OK with incorrectly predicted interruptions happening occasionally and don't take it as an embarrassing faux pas).

(Not in the talk, as the talk wasn't actually about any of this, despite how much time I dedicated to it... it was about working from home.) I do feel like there is a real problem here in that we have a systemic issue (in addition to some people who are just directly assholes who don't want to hear women speak; I 100% appreciate that these people, unfortunately, exist) where we have taught women to be subservient and to not speak up for themselves in lots of contexts, even if the pervading culture of the men around them involves a very short short turn delay, and one aspect of this is "they don't interrupt people"... men do interrupt people, as part of simply being taught that our new information is de facto valuable, and we thereby have an advantage over women. It isn't because we are rude: it is because we have a different dynamic ingrained in us by our (joint) surrounding culture and it is absolutely unfair and biased against women. And so we need to be cognizant of this and do it less with women and even actively "make space" for women to speak. But, at the same time, we should be training women that interruption is ok and that not only will they do better if they interrupt but the entire team might benefit from their interruption, and that being good at the predictive modeling is a conversational skill everyone must have anyway and for which there is general value if you get better.

I know I'm not a communication expert so I have to take my own observations with a grain of salt, but I would say I only have trouble conversing with maybe half the population because of my inclination to not interrupt. But I've noticed no gender or geographic trend to this. Some groups of men or women I'm able to converse with smoothly, as they seem to deliberately pause to let other's speak. In other groups, I'm hopeless. Perhaps it's an introvert/extrovert divide (I'm skeptical of that dichotomy, but that's another can of worms.) I can talk comfortably one-on-one with my mother or any of her sisters, but put two or more of them in the same room and I'll not get a word in edgewise. For that matter, I also feel fine monologuing in front of an audience and always have, so I think it's not simply a matter of shyness.

I find myself wanting to say something, and never getting to get a word in, then I quietly morn the words I never said :-(

The easiest way to not be an interrupter is to be quiet until it's your turn to talk or when someone asks you a question. Whatever you have to say can wait, no matter how relevant it is. If it's important, write it down for later. This is not that difficult.

In some groups, you'll never get your turn. As an experiment, I once counted how many half-second (or more) pauses there were in a meeting I had to attend at work. In half an hour (the duration of the meeting), there were none.

On the other hand, I agree with you. I see some people saying "interruption is ok". I disagree. It has to be an exception reserved for keeping the meeting on track. The normal course of things should be that everyone gets their turn to say their bit or to "pass". People who aren't able to wait for their turn or take too long typically will understand if you/the-manager have/has a brief chat with them later (or the person who called for the meeting should bring them back on track).

In my circle of close guy-friends it’s so common to just always crack jokes and banter that there are zero silent moments. In fact there’s often more than one person yelling over another person with a better joke or twist on a previous joke or some story. It’s like a bazaar.

You do need to time it right to get the word in, but you can’t wait for a silent moment.

It’s like merging on the highway. You can’t wait for all cars to stop. Have to time the merge correctly and force your way in, even if nobody is letting you in.

Social settings are not the same as meetings at work. I don't mind sitting back quietly and in fact prefer others carrying the conversations when in a social setting. My point of view above was only about official meetings. Work shouldn't be an environment where one can only be heard by being rude (interrupting).

You talk about intent a lot, and how subconsciously communicating this is an issue is better than supposedly direct interaction, but what is it you don't want to see specifically? Nobody has ever implied that there is any intention behind most of this type of sexist behavior, it is just useful to be aware that it is a thing so you can work on actively avoiding it, as with any other unconscious bias.

I'm in this situation a lot, I'm trans and my voice really does not match my appearance. People get confused, I understand, but beyond the first "please address me this way" I am in no way responsible for the difficulty people have in going through with the request. Do note that I personally really don't go out of my way to confront people if they keep doing it, I just avoid them as much as I can, because in current corporate cultures, you cannot win a confrontation like this if the person you're complaining to has issues relating to you. And for most people pronouns and honorifics are not a big deal. As I'd expect that sexism is not for men. But ideally anyone in my situation would be entirely justified to make a fuss about it.

It is not the fault or responsibility of anyone negatively affected to treat you with gloves. You should know better than taking it as a personal insult when someone pulls you aside and tells you "you're are possibly having this common bias, please be mindful of it".

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