I never got commission or any sort of profit or pay for being an Assistly partner. I did it because I enjoyed the product, but at this point the company itself can't be trusted to have their customer's best interest in mind.
Can you list what parts of the product that are different and worse than it was yesterday? I have been evaluating Assistly for the last 2 weeks for my company and today I hardly noticed any change at all. Actually I kind of prefer the more muted color scheme, the new white space in the open cases and a few other smaller things. These appear to be the biggest change.
Perhaps I am not using all the features you use to notice the difference, but the Agent and Admin sections of the site appear identical functionality-wise to me, just slightly different color scheme, visual cues and the new Desk.com logo. I did prefer the old logo though!:)
It might be helpful to elaborate on how the functionality or usability has altered today since the rebrand to give others evaluating these types of products more information.
By the looks of it (from the perspective of people not involved in the support industry), you appear to have a problem with the company for making a name change, which seems petty (going by the comments here, and my own thoughts after reading your post). If you were to have outlined the product differences before/ after, and why the changes made rendered the product inferior, you would probably have more support.
As it stands, to me at least, it looks like you were simply looking for an excuse, and a re-branding simply provided what you thought was an adequate excuse (and the HN community disagrees).
I think it is important to keep in mind that Salesforce is a ~$15B company, and sending 20 customers their way probably doesn't constitute a strategic partner to an organization of that size.
I actually feel like I got quite a reward for my time at 37signals - Yes, that's me Jason's talking about :)
Since this topic is sort of centered around a small part of my experience, I'd love to shed some light on a couple points:
True! I started my own business! For about 7 hours of my life I didn't know what I was going to do if I couldn't bloom at 37signals, and then I told David and Jason I was starting my own company, CoSupport.us.
True: I left 37signals because I really wanted to do more support-wise, and the needs of the company didn't mesh with my ideas. They need people full-time on support, they don't need someone who's not there responding to tickets. After 4 years of answering 100+ emails a day, I wanted to do other things. Needing me on tickets interacting with customers is what Jason means when he says they can't have people working on a team not doing the work of the team.
True: David and Jason may sometimes come off a bit stiff, perhaps even cold, when it comes to how they manage their business, but that's the unfortunate aspect of print, edits, etc. In truth, working for them was the most challenging, educational, inspirational time of my career so far. They are the opposite of cold when it comes to their employee's ambition, ideas, talent and goals.
True: My experience leaving was equivalent to a professional football player saying to his coach, "Hey I think I want to try being a referee!" The player isn't on the team to be a referee. If he wants to be a referee, he needs to go to referee school and become a referee, not say, "I'm going to stay on the football team and be a referee, too." That's not how it works in football, or at 37signals.
False: I was not at all "rewarded" for my ambition by being shut down, put down, held down, or in any way shuttered by David or Jason. I was rewarded by them telling me I had too much ambition to be contained there, and by them supporting my new company as best they can.
False: I actually did my first job for 37signals in 2005, and started full-time in March 2007. So a little more than "just about 3 years."
The only bad thing I have to say about 37signals or their management or my leaving is that they stole my frog, which you can ask Jason Fried about.
As a woman who has also been a CSR and has almost exclusively worked around men in the computer tech industry I think you are making the best of the situation and I applaud your noble efforts to move upwards. I think there are many subtle details most others around here will never understand (or even try to).
But I still think you got a raw deal no matter how they spin it and I firmly believe in the back of their minds you were always flagged as "disposable" (replaceable) if necessary. I've seen it over and over again over the years.
Outsourcing support isn't best for everyone, but for a 2-3 person development shop sometimes it's the best bet for them. I would never suggest a company the size of Zappos outsource their support, but they aren't our ideal customer either!
And yes, the product is no longer as great.