Rambling, but to get to the point, AI in general will strip this SEO/Marketing/Boomer catch phrasing, and build the common language which I appreciate greatly. I can go to ChatGPT or Claude and ask it I want to Foo this Bar with these filters, doesn't matter if its SQL, Python, Unix, Alteryx, Tableau... whatever, it digest the request without the fluff and responds commonly.
To stack on this info hunting or product research with AI is also typically less full of fluff for me. I don't have to deal with a sales engineer saying how wonderful their ML product is when I know its garbage immediately, I can just move on and assess the rest of the product.
The only value I can still see in Gartner is their customer survey information, but I am sure someone or somehow AI will scrape the forum post for all these products and weight the products community feedback about its product.
really?
Maybe need to expand their DEI trainig.
[1] "swyx recognizes $IT as a visionary short in the DX Tips Magic Quadrant of Boomer Relics That No Longer Make Sense"
This reads like parody. I see another post in here talking about "Boomer catch phrasing" (in a word salad comment) which is simply hilarious.
While this millennial thought guru seems to think their age defines them, I think the rest of us realize that there are gullible rubes in every age group. There are fresh new recruits citing the gartner magic quadrant or whatever nonsense makes their world feel more orderly. I mean, LinkedIn is absolutely full of hilarious nonsense from people at every age trying to show that they Ordered The World because of some list or source they subscribe to.
Having worked in both corporate and startup worlds, I've rarely seen anyone under 40 reference a Gartner report as credible or actually use that as a source of information. Everyone knows it's pay-to-play, not particularly credible, and as the younger generations age into these very senior roles, I have no doubt that Gartner will lose a lot of relevance.
Given that trust in "mainstream media" has pretty much collapsed everywhere, I don't really doubt that this will inevitably hit the obvious corporate gatekeepers as well. Enterprise/b2b is just 10-20 years behind on trends experienced elsewhere.
Amazing, super simple to understand and without any need for hilariously shallow bigotry!
I haven't heard anyone in business -- like you, having worked in F100, corporate, startups, and so on -- reference a Gartner report seriously in well over a decade. From any age group. Whether "boomer" or super savvy YouTube-watching (lol) "millenial". I mean, I know they exist as this company still has revenue, but it seems like classic inertia where people are just going through the motions of historic norms as something is phased out, precisely why the market is looking poorly on the company.
Seriously, trying to tie the evolution of industry to some sort of tired, laughable ageist nonsense is just boorish. Be better.
When someone older yips about how younguns today are all cooked and they play Roblox all day, it looks like ageist shrieking from someone with little nuance and a very binary view of the world. It is no different when laughable pieces like this appear.
Their pivot to AI and rebranding (from a dev advocate who did js frameworks to now suddenly being an expert of AI/LLMs) was inspiring but this take has left me with a poor taste in my mouth.
And I've known some good Gartner analysts... I just want this market to evolve as a win/win for everyone.
Some of the startup industry has no idea how enterprise is at all. There aren't even any trendy CEO/CTO here. It's all suits.
Not all things are sexy.
Separately, they offer consulting with their analysts. A lot of these consultants are quite knowledgeable. They also are usually there to help a leader make a purchasing decision.
If you remove an 'r', there's the other way you can get placed high.
It’s really just the suits relying on it as a crutch in lieu of actually hiring competent Engineers and Architects and then listening to them. As those folks cycle out with their millions in cash to retire somewhere, I’m hoping us younger folks won’t tolerate such consultant drivel.
If you've ever been part of the process, you learn quick that it's one analyst who works whatever beat your company operates in who has an extremely poor understanding of your product, the market, or where it's headed. But they'll have a new catchphrase they've dreamed up and so it's just a game of saying "yeah, sure, we do that" and then paying money to be mentioned.
I still recommend to companies that they should endeavor to be put into a Gardener Magic quadrant because it can be transformative for enterprise sales pipeline. But I always feel bad for the purchasing decision makers as non of this is good data. I agree with swyx that automated deep research will phase this whole model out, which will be a net win for both companies and customers.
Deep Research doesn’t do this, and even if it could today, human trust systems take a very long time to build.
Earnestly printing out the latest white paper and distributing it to their directs. Hiring "head of X" for whatever new X Gartner has invented.
Thinking they are getting a peak at industry best practices when in reality the industry leaders are not sharing anything with Gartner, so its blind leading blind.
This leads to a lot of self delusion that actually being a lagger is an advantage because we'll simply buy XYZ that Gartner suggested and leapfrog over the leaders who are mired in their legacy tech.
No thought whatsoever to the people, processes and institutional knowledge that got the leaders to where they are. Nor any questioning as to whether there are actual off the shelf solutions for things your better competitors built in house with many man years of effort.
So the sooner the better ..
On the day this was published (2025-02-07) it closed at $529.29. Yesterday it closed at $238.37.
Source - https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/IT/history/
Victory lap submission?
Does anyone know if that’s true? Gartner calls that whole arm of the business “insights” and doesn’t break it down further in their SEC filings.
I’d be surprised if that’s the case.
Of course, you can technically list for free.
But look! For the low low price of $x,xxx per month, now you can show one of 40 tailor-made award icons on your site!
Or, unlock the privilege of showing “user reviews” from our site on your site! (of course if you had managed to get reviews independently, you’re not allowed to use the widget without paying)
Don’t have reviews? Ah, I forgot to mention. The $x,xxx plan also comes with “review generation” — we’ll pay users to write reviews for you!
Oh, and on an unrelated note, the $x,xxx plan just also happens to unlock dofollow links across each of those 40 made up categories, which all rank highly in google. And the $xx,xxx plan means that - user ratings aside - you can end up at the top of those categories.
It’s hard to describe it other than the author says: a grift. Seeing those logos on other companies sites are now a huge turn off to me personally, and I haven’t yet capitulated for my own SaaS, but I suspect this isn’t the feeling of the execs they seek to target. Or maybe it is, and it’s just the price of doing business.
It'll be interesting to see how AI Agents approach things. My prediction is that more of our media is going to be controlled by our AI Agent's Algorithm instead of Google, Twitter, and Facebook's algorithm or some distant editors who decided what went on the front page of the newspaper.
The data may pour cold water on whatever Big Trend is supposedly rising to the fore, or call out important caveats that vendors would rather not address.
Most HN readers don't have visibility into what a gaggle of CEOs is going to be tempted to do.
X, Podcasts, and Substacks offer up-to-the-second analysis of the latest trends and such, but at no point will they offer the type of indemnity that Gartner does. They are a technical resource, not a business leadership one.
...and more importantly, allows you to keep your job should your choice not work out.
Gartner, like consultants, get paid for so management can pass the buck and not be held accountable for their decisions.
How do I know?
Because they aren't actually selling software advice; they're laundering personal-responsibility for corporate decision makers.
That's the real business of most brand-name B2B "advice."
Very few people are dumb enough to believe the 22yr-old new grad from Ohio that created the powerpoint you're buying is an expert in Software (or management in the case of McKinsey/BCG/Bain, or law in the case of overpriced white shoe law firms, or accounting in the case of the big 4, etc).
But John Executive with the big house and 3 kids doesn't care what the actual advice is, or if your software will save the company millions. He just wants to keep his job.
Being able to point to a "trusted brand" like Gartner as the escape hatch for why you made a large decision with downside risk is priceless. That's the real grift.
"...so that software implementation didn't turn out well for us? Wow..who could have known? I followed what the trusted experts at Gartner said!"
The children of elites need an avenue to fulfill their parents' expectations and propagate the legitimacy of the social order. Consulting firms provide that.
Leadership comp is a total grift and has ballooned in recent decades (in the US exclusively) since the 1980s due to the shift to stock-based comp. Fun story, a lot of analysts didn’t even count stock based comp as part of the cost structure of a company until oddly recently.
:-) /s
I have a feeling the people running such a successful marketing machine are smart enough to know that over time, decision makers' tastes and preferences will shift as younger generations age into their target audience. Maybe they won't be able to pull it off but I suspect they're well aware that millenials will be listening to something different from their conjoined triangles of success.
Lately I've been trying to reprogram myself to be more self-critical when I run into successful products that don't speak to my own personal tastes - it's really easy to just say "other people are stupid" but I don't think it's usually the full answer. Gartner is kind of like the technology Consumer Reports for F500 executives - it's not really any different from you looking at the rating breakdown for a vacuum cleaner or kitchen appliance back when Consumer Reports was the go-to source for product reviews.
Baby boomer executives are not stupid just because they couldn't tell you exactly how relational databases and Linux work. And it's gonna be a while until insanely busy and established 65 year olds start making significant purchasing decisions based on anime avatar tweets, so Gartner's audience definitely shouldn't be underestimated.
https://successfulsoftware.net/2025/07/11/pay-to-play-the-ug...
Which branch of the quantum multiverse are you in? I want to go there.
People use them as a way to justify their choices, because they're slide-deck friendly - just paste the chart and say "look, X is a leader on the Magic Quadrant, therefore we should buy X!"
The Magic Quadrant started out as a gimmick to kind of popularize Gartner's consulting services, but ended up becoming what they were most known for, to the point they now have to include disclaimers saying "uh guys? we do other stuff too, y'know?"
There are a lot of programmers out there not meeting that description.
robertlagrant•5mo ago
> make up term as The Future
> put a lot of marketing firepower behind it
> make people pay to list on the magic quadrants
This is partially correct. My understanding is Gartner will also allow people to pay them to create the segment that exactly matches their product.
xnx•5mo ago
esafak•5mo ago
api•5mo ago
the_mitsuhiko•5mo ago
[1]: https://vercel.com/gartner-mq-visionary
kstrauser•5mo ago
lazide•5mo ago
fakedang•5mo ago
- we have been named an "Industry Challenger"
- Gartner calls us an industry-focused "Niche Product"
- "Visionaries"
- "Leaders"
Like another comment stated, you get placed in different brackets based on how much you pay them to list your product. Niche guys didn't pay enough while the leaders are your usual suspects.
notfromhere•5mo ago
that's how you end up in scenarios where some shit IBM product is leading the chart against its objectively superior competitors.
DebtDeflation•5mo ago
antonvs•5mo ago
If by “several” you mean well over 100, then yes.
DebtDeflation•5mo ago
antonvs•5mo ago
smcin•5mo ago
tootie•5mo ago
robertlagrant•5mo ago
cnnlived•5mo ago
rendaw•5mo ago