> If he said something closer to "Thank you all for your time. You're doing fascinating work but I don't think that this would be a good fit
We can be almost certain this is not what he said, because the lead had to run after him and ask him why he was leaving. It's really quite challenging to leave unexpectedly without giving an explanation and leave a pilot impression: "Thanks but I gotta go" doesn't cut it when you clearly already booked the whole day for the interview.
As I said somewhere else in this thread, it's easy enough to think up plausible scenarios given what we've heard so far. One that fits the possibility of saying that quote is that the lead wanted to clarify why it was not a good fit (a situation I have been in a few times before from both sides0.
More to the point, however, is that I was presenting a spectrum, with the-only-thing-worse-is-to-bomb-the-office bad on one end and about-as-well-as-leaving-early-can-end-without-bribing-everyone good on the other end and suggesting that bridges would really only expect to be burned near the worse end of the spectrum.
Or, even more of a key point, we only have a fragment of a second-hand telling of a single account of an interaction that really doesn't mean a whole lot and yet people still see the need to take sides and attack one party or the other from this position. This is so many levels of ridiculous that I couldn't help but try to inject some perspective.
We can be almost certain this is not what he said, because the lead had to run after him and ask him why he was leaving. It's really quite challenging to leave unexpectedly without giving an explanation and leave a pilot impression: "Thanks but I gotta go" doesn't cut it when you clearly already booked the whole day for the interview.