Contrary to what MyFarm's been posting, I actually think ED's business management and communication skills are pretty damn good considering the landscape of this industry.
The merits of the rebranding decision will be debated add infinitum, but if there's one thing a business manager cannot be criticised for it's listening to your customers. How many instances of darkcoin footsoldiers reporting back that they can't get the coin listed on accepted here there and everywhere do people need to recognise that ?
I could see ED being criticised for being pigheaded enough not to take head of such reports but not for doing so.
Then there's this business of Vertoe. Well w.t.f. was Evan supposed to do ? He had to make a decision. Vertoe had painted Evan right into a corner by stamping his foot so publicly and firmly on the brand issue (for no good business reason I might add). It was Vertoe who forced the confrontation by turning that into a showstopping point, not Evan.
Then there's his "communications" skills. Well as far as I can see there's no developer around that conducts themselves with remotely the degree of decorum and dignity that ED does. His formal announcements are clear, concise and unambigious. He stays well away from forum flamewars and limits himself to remarking on significant technical issues.
On top of that he's made some very balanced intuitive calls over technical issues and general direction. I accept he's possibly difficult on certain areas - who isn't. Maybe Vertoe was right that more testing could have been done before certain releases etc so I acknowledge that team members may have had legitimate gripes.
All the same, for me, when it's a market like this you buy into someone's intuition and just hope to hell the people around them can provide enough support, stability and rationality to get the maximum out of it and keep the show on the road. Vertoe was an unfortunate casualty of that process but as far as I can see it was more to do with a simple divergence of philosophy than incompetence in Evan's communication.
+ 100
...and I would just add.
If you had to undertake some sort of formal benchmarking process that took into account capabilities across multiple domains of programming skill, industry awareness/knowledge, management skill, communications skill and overall business acumen, Evan is clearly going to come out way ahead of most devs in crypto. Now that's not to say this is a winning factor (i.e. given the pretty ordinary level of dev competence in this field one may need to be light years ahead to be really demonstrating advanced capabilities that stack up in other realms of finance/IT) but it certainly puts him into a good position.
I've read all your posts MyFarm and I can appreciate where you're coming from but I think you're taking a line of thinking that is classic big business / corporate boardroom style of modus operandi where corporate group-think rules and left-field innovation, brilliance and nimble responsiveness is basically trampled on. Some of what you're saying (about needing to get a high level "professional" in and ensure they're well paid) is the sort of line VCs or bankers would push when they're shelling out seed capital. It's what an IBM would do to a small start up upon acquiring them and, in the process, the brilliant minds, advanced thinkers and the innovation would all exit stage right because they can't possibly exist amongst "the suits".
Evan has brought us to where we are. Is it perfect? Is it 100% how it should be? Has the risk been minimised as much as possible? The answer to those questions (of course) is a resounding NO! It's an out-on-the-bleeding-edge project. It's full of issues, complexities and difficulties. There's a never ending need to balance Evan's creativity and just-do-it attitude with more measured processes (like more rigorous release management for instance). But he's brought us this far with the most astounding level of commitment and action. His work output is clearly stunning and his penchant for thinking ten steps ahead about how major issues in crypto can be resolved is impressive beyond anything I've seen in this realm. I for one feel like I'm very fortunate to be involved with such an amazing guy who's doing so much good in this space. The very last thing I'd want to see is all sorts of formal structure and process built up around Evan. Of course, it's inevitable that we'll need more of it at some point (can't operate in the 'financial services' world without it) but at this early stage, I believe Evan has his finger on the pulse and knows what he's doing. And there are enough people in here (like what bigrcanada was just pointing out about his background) who have enough extensive experience that they can perceive what's going on from the same angle.
None of what I'm saying though is to say we won't have legal stoushes and problems going forward, but I believe Evan's insight and creative thought processes will, to a degree, negate whatever comes along (as difficult as it may be). I'm all for having dissenting voices on a project to negate the natural build up of cognitive dissonance but your comments about Vertoe being the second most important dev I think are out of line and a misrepresentation of what's really true. The manner in which he exited, dumping 50,000 DRK (or thereabouts) without warning was a dummy spit of epic proportions. It's just as well it happened now and not further down the track. That type of personality within a team environment is often too damaging by contrast to the benefit they bring.
