Jeff Ament is a fine player and a major contributor to Pearl Jam's sound and vibe. I met and hung out with him, Stone Gossard, Mike McCready and Matt Cameron in 2005 and they were all super cool.
I get not liking what Pearl Jam do, but they have been around for 25 years and continue to release new music and do sold out tours in large venues. They do this having not had any real mainstream play since the late 90s at best and really mainstream interest began to wane after VS. This was apparently a conscious decision of the band. The massive success of Ten and the spotlight it put them under made them uncomfortable so they went out of their way to get out of the spotlight. Vitalogy and No Code are good evidence of this attempt move out of that space. Personally, I love both of those records but they're a bit dense and I can see why they wouldn't appeal to the mainstream listener. They also had a massive influence on a slew of other bands (not all of it good, by any means

).
Anyway, any band that has had a 25 year career and is still releasing new music and doing successful tours has my respect even if I'm not a big fan of the music.