Good points about using good tools & analysis techniques - especially to get to latent sources of slowness. But I'm not sure you can say that he's not profilin

Good points about using good tools & analysis techniques - especially to get to latent sources of slowness. But I'm not sure you can say that he's not profiling - he's using the end users' direct experience as the profiling tool, prioritizing the fixes by greatest annoyance. Since he let himself get in the mode of being reactive, that's not a bad way out of the hole he dug himself. Of course the best way is to design your architecture for speed, minimize all code usage & data transfer, use the profiling tools before release candidate status, and prioritizing speed & performance in the QA process.