Valid concerns? It's hard to imagine how Jim's comments could have been responded to, since they consist mainly of nonspecific, unsubstantiated charges mixed with a few factual inaccuracies.
Going through Jim's various posts and picking out the major points, he:
1) Calls ACS 4.0 "half-assed." Clearly he has a right to this opinion, but since he supplied no specific criticism, what is anyone supposed to say?
2) Says we treat our partners and users like "shit." Similar comment as above.
3) Says that Allen and Cesar care more about $1000 chairs and flat-panel monitors than making good software. The chairs and monitors predate Allen, and Cesar certainly had nothing to do with them -- those were Philip's ideas.
4) Accuses aD of "constantly decreasing integrety" without supplying specifics.
5) Makes bizarre comments about koi ponds and the piano. Aside from the irrelevance, aD does not have, nor has it ever had, a koi pond, and the piano actually belongs to a couple of employees. If he's trying to make some point about profligate spending, it's been Allen who's been bringing that under control.
6) Finally, in this thread, accuses aD of "firing people in very classless ways." As both a manager who participated in the evaluation process and one of the downsized myself, I'd be interested in knowing how Jim, who was in no way involved, came to this conclusion.
I understand some members of the user community are disappointed to see Adam go, but you can't realistically expect aD to run its personnel decisions by the user community for approval. Please judge aD's commitment to the community going forward by the degree of effort they put into it, rather than which specific face is involved. And if you have criticisms of aD's policies or products, specifics work a lot better than general flamefests.
