Sager: Candidates interviewing across disconnected hype sectors lack genuine product affinity
Eric Sager · Why great leaders make themselves obsolete | Eric Sager (COO, Plaid) · Jul 16, 2026 · at 54:42
Eric Sager, COO of Plaid, explains his interview heuristic for detecting whether job candidates genuinely care about a company's mission or are simply chasing trending companies.
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“Some simple things are just like, what other roles are you looking at? And like, why? Like what connects all of them? And I think if you get an answer to that, that's like, well, I'm looking at this company over here, like in AI, and then I'm looking at this other thing. It's like, it's just all over the place. And the only thing that really reasonably would ever connect them is like you read somewhere an article that says that they're doing well. The odds are that whatever they tell you next about their affinity for your product and solutions isn't quite as genuine as it is, right? Just the odds dictate that because otherwise, why would you be looking at 10 different things?”
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