[HN Gopher] Gartner's grift is about to unravel
___________________________________________________________________
Gartner's grift is about to unravel
Author : mooreds
Score : 131 points
Date : 2025-08-13 15:47 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dx.tips)
(TXT) w3m dump (dx.tips)
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > The basic business model of Gartner is:
|
| > 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 wrote:
| "OpenAI top Leader in AI companies with a CEO named 'Sam'"
| esafak wrote:
| Coining new categories gives startups the validation they need
| to justify their differentiation, which is how they get
| launched. If the company coins its own category, prospective
| buyers will never find the product in the first place since
| they will not have not heard of the category. So companies like
| Gartner are serving a valuable function in the startup economy.
| It's the formalization of what Karpathy did when he coined the
| term "vibe coding", christening a new category.
| api wrote:
| Can we crowd source bullshit neologisms instead? GenA does it
| just fine skibidi Ohio.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| I have no idea how people end up on the magic quadrant but I
| had a good chuckle recently when I saw Vercel advertise that
| they are Visionaries in the 2025 Gartner(r) Magic Quadrant(tm)
| and when you look at the infographic [1] you become a visionary
| by just executing worse than the leaders.
|
| [1]: https://vercel.com/gartner-mq-visionary
| kstrauser wrote:
| That's astounding. I could see bragging if you're _almost_ as
| able to execute but with a better future plan: "look at us,
| the up-and-comers!" But less ability to execute _and_ a
| smaller roadmap? I think I 'd be keeping my mouth shut.
| lazide wrote:
| The problem with sales and marketing is they kinda can't
| keep their mouth shut. It's a problem.
| fakedang wrote:
| I mean, look at the quadrants - they all can be spun
| positively.
|
| - 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 wrote:
| the magic quadrant is essentially a stack ranking of 'how
| much money are you paying us vs how much money we think we
| can get out of you'.
|
| that's how you end up in scenarios where some shit IBM
| product is leading the chart against its objectively superior
| competitors.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| A few months ago I saw one of Gartner's AI Magic Quadrants
| (there are several) and it had IBM, Oracle, and a few
| companies I'd never heard of in the Leaders quadrant and
| OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google in the bottom left. Obviously
| companies like OpenAI and Google have absolutely no need to
| pay Gartner for anything. But how is this actually
| considered credible research by people in non-tech
| companies? You'd have to be living in a cave to not know
| who is really leading in AI.
| smcin wrote:
| Sure is magic for Gartner Inc.'s revenues... not so much
| for buyers.
| tootie wrote:
| I worked briefly on a Gartner (and Forrester) pitch for a
| services company. They do do an evaluation and you get to
| make your case. We had to compile case studies, highlight our
| competencies and the like. Put it in a deck and present it.
| Then they call up our references and get their input. We even
| had a consultant who specializes in helping companies with
| their rankings. As a services company, it was pretty similar
| to how we pitched clients and I gather the evaluation they
| did was also similar. I didn't get any hint of corruption in
| the process but I wasn't really in position to see it if it
| were happening. The execs seemed to take it seriously and put
| sincere effort into it.
| datax2 wrote:
| Well written. Coming out of college years ago Gartner was a whole
| section of review during my business courses. Working with Data
| for years now I have become hyper sensitive to this keyword
| grift; Big data, Data lake, Datalakehouse, realtime-analytics,
| no-code, data model, data schema...etc. People lean so hard on
| certain words as if they mean they are doing something different
| or unique. You work in one product in your company, then you
| bring someone who has experience in another product and they
| remark "But product X cannot do XYZGrift" but it can, people hang
| on these keywords as though they are platform actions or
| enablement that exist only there.
|
| 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.
| SirFatty wrote:
| "Boomer catch phrasing"
|
| really?
| taude wrote:
| It's really funny how the younger people are creating
| derogatory terms about older people. It's also applied to
| people who actually aren't baby boomers, too. And they're
| repeating this, because the title of the article had it in
| the sub-title [1], and I found it off-puting. But hey, I'm
| just a sensitive old person.
|
| 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"
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| It seems every generation will have this arrogance for their
| first ten years on the job. Then the next generation will
| declare them to be outdated dinosaurs and repeat the same
| mistakes in slightly changed form.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| "Boomer C-Suites who fancy themselves Enterprise Tech executives
| and are happy to throw humans at any problem were happy buying
| off the Gartner catalog and then hitting the golf course. Today,
| millennial CEOs and CTOs get their analysis and news sources from
| X, /r/LocalLlama, the All In Podcast, Semianalysis Substacks, any
| number of YouTubes and Podcasts."
|
| 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.
| notfromhere wrote:
| Eh. They're not wrong. A lot of folks still pay Gartner money
| to be on their lists, but it's more of a feeling that you have
| to, and not because it actually leads to any results.
|
| 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.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| "People used to rely on this thing. As replacements come
| along and a bit of the magic was revealed to be a hoax,
| people rely less on that thing so it became less valuable."
|
| 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.
| bitpush wrote:
| I lost a bit of respect for author, who I see frequently here
| on HN and elsewhere. I always thought they were reasonable,
| highly technical and have been casually following them since
| their svelte days.
|
| 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.
| swyx wrote:
| (author here) sorry you feel that way. this was just a rant
| because its fun to get unhinged every now and then - dx.tips
| is my outlet for that. if you see my work on latent.space and
| ai.engineer that's more representative of my "normal" self :)
| toddmorey wrote:
| Yeah poorly phrased, but swyx is a good & kind dude who will
| do just about anything to hep folks out. I think he's just
| understandably frustrated with a dated (and rather parasitic)
| business model.
|
| And I've known some good Gartner analysts... I just want this
| market to evolve as a win/win for everyone.
| pm90 wrote:
| I didn't downvote you, but I do agree with the author. The
| boomer CTOs Ive worked under have almost always been incredibly
| unqualified and resistant to change. They are not moving in the
| same physical or digital circles and therefore need Gartner to
| inform them of where the industry is headed. I wondered at why
| they hold these jobs and my guess is that it's due to "the
| people they know" which is usually boomers at other companies.
| Its a scam.
| intvocoder wrote:
| This passage completely undercuts the overall message the
| author is going for. The idea that the All In podcast or the
| remaining users of Twitter are authoritative is laughable.
| taude wrote:
| I'm waiting for the OP to make an incorrect decision, but
| justify it because he vibed it on X and from a YouTuber.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| Yeah, nah. The enterprise software market is nowhere near close
| to being upended by AI, and Gartner has their tendrils deeply
| wrapped inside of it. Small companies like Netlify which are
| barely in use by this market are not a canary in the coal mine.
| crinkly wrote:
| Yeah that. The company I work for has an annual revenue of
| about 6x the _valuation_ of Netlify. We 're busy sucking
| Gartner off at every possible corner and learning it's a
| mistake over and over again. Everyone we know is as well.
|
| 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.
| samdixon wrote:
| What do they use it for?
| phillipcarter wrote:
| Purchasing decisions. If Gartner doesn't claim you're a
| Leader, then a massive chunk of your addressable market is
| not unlockable for you. This may be fine for now, but
| eventually when your investors demand accelerated revenue
| curves (and you're not an AI coding tool), then you'll be
| talking to Gartner and praying they place you high. Full
| stop.
|
| 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.
| henrikschroder wrote:
| > and praying they place you high.
|
| If you remove an 'r', there's the other way you can get
| placed high.
| stego-tech wrote:
| I will never trust Gartner for recommendations on anything.
| Either your product solve a problem we presently have or we
| don't need it.
|
| 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.
| toddmorey wrote:
| His point was not that the enterprise software market would be
| upended immediately by AI, but rather that the pay-to-play scam
| of analyst-powered purchasing advice is near the end of its
| lifecycle.
|
| 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.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| I wouldn't bet on automated deep research until they figure
| out a business model that gives people a throat to choke.
| Enterprise software is a world where it's more important to
| have another human you can blame for when you fuck things up
| than actually making a good decision. What incentive is there
| for an exec to say, "well I ran a deep research and it seemed
| good enough to me" when their boss demands an answer as to
| why $VENDOR was a bad choice?
| toddmorey wrote:
| I hear you, but the fellah in the org who says "Don't blame
| me ,I made this purchasing decision because they paid the
| most to an analyst firm" is definitely the neck I want to
| choke.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| Sure. But Gartner is Gartner. They are a trusted brand
| and you can't "hold them wrong". And they also do a great
| job of being pulled into a meeting with the throat-choker
| to gaslight them into being fine with the decision.
|
| Deep Research doesn't do this, and even if it could
| today, human trust systems take a very long time to
| build.
| jongjong wrote:
| Makes sense. The anthem of enterprise is "Nobody ever got
| fired for choosing IBM."
| kerblang wrote:
| The web is already compostable
| steveBK123 wrote:
| My experience with Gartner has been seeing in-over-their-head
| CTOs in lagging firms take their recommendations a bit too
| seriously.
|
| 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 ..
| dcchuck wrote:
| Gartner stock price:
|
| 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?
| swyx wrote:
| (im the author) i didnt submit this haha. thanks @mooreds for
| always having my back.
| personjerry wrote:
| Is it too late to short?
| twoodfin wrote:
| This article implies that Gartner's revenue stream comes
| primarily from vendors.
|
| 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.
| apavlo wrote:
| They double dip. You pay them to review your company. Other
| companies pay them to read those reviews.
| twoodfin wrote:
| Right, but what's the ratio? Every interaction I've had with
| Gartner suggests the vast bulk of their analysis revenue
| comes from "clients" rather than vendors.
| pinewurst wrote:
| What's really funny is that Gartner are probably the most
| reputable of the enterprise analysts. I had to cultivate these
| for years and could tell stories...
| tallytarik wrote:
| G2, Sourceforge (yes, that one), and Gartner's
| Capterra/GetApp/SoftwareAdvice all have the same business plan:
| charge vendors $x,xxx+ per month to outrank other vendors in
| their made up categories.
|
| 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.
| abirch wrote:
| I think this is the at same model that the NYTimes book reviews
| back had in the 1990s. Pay us money and we'll say nice things.
|
| 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.
| ilamont wrote:
| Ignoring the magic quadrant baloney and market growth
| predictions, Gartner and other analyst firms conduct some useful
| research based on large industry surveys on how companies and
| large organizations regard emerging technologies, or how they are
| planning to pilot or deploy new technology. This is especially
| true of in-house series conducted on a quarterly or annual basis,
| less so for vendor-funded research.
|
| 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.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| do you think, in so doing, they discover anything not obvious
| to an audience like HN which posts and shares insights
| themselves?
| jaybrendansmith wrote:
| Agree. If you get past the baloney, the typical Gartner analyst
| is speaking with 50-100 CTOs per month. This is incredibly
| useful, as it provides a great general understanding of what
| companies are implementing, what is working, what is failing,
| what is no longer important, what is important. This allows
| them to become true mavens on their specific vertical or sub-
| vertical, sharing best practice. So this is definitely
| valuable, depending on how cutting-edge you happen to be.
| nimbius wrote:
| large institutions dont buy into gartner because its accurate or
| even reasonably current. Gartner is part of a risk management
| strategy for shareholders. its a brand and reputation that you
| can shove in front of any problem you might encounter to insulate
| your companies reputation.
|
| 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.
| overfeed wrote:
| > to insulate your companies reputation
|
| ...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.
| pembrook wrote:
| Gartner isn't going anywhere.
|
| 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!"_
| jongjong wrote:
| Yes this is an astute perspective. I would say a lot of
| consulting firms are basically little more than narrative
| devices in the bigger story of 'the economy'.
|
| The children of elites need an avenue to fulfill their parents'
| expectations and propagate the legitimacy of the social order.
| Consulting firms provide that.
| manmal wrote:
| If ass covering is easy like that, what's actually the argument
| for insane leadership comps?
| Vegenoid wrote:
| If it's 100% dumb, then it seems unsustainable, as the brand
| will become tarnished, and no longer an escape hatch. It seems
| like it has to provide at least okay advice, or it isn't
| sustainable. I have no idea if that's what Gartner is doing or
| not, this is the first I'm hearing about them, and it's
| fascinating. I had no idea a thing like this existed. I guess
| maybe we're watching them pay for bad advice right now.
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| How are the architects and directors at my company's IT
| department going to make decisions without Gartner? They don't
| believe the people who have hands-on experience with the
| products. Who else can they go to for advice?
| mxuribe wrote:
| Boy, am i glad i ran into you! I'd like to introduce myself: I
| am lead analyst for a new org named Rentrag! We do the opposite
| of Gartner, so you can trust us, And our analysis!
|
| :-) /s
| weitendorf wrote:
| I think this assumes Gartner just coincidentally offer the right
| kind of branding and messaging to drive $100M+ technology
| spending decisions at the present time.
|
| 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.
| kleiba wrote:
| I can neither parse the headline nor the subheading?!
| jrexilius wrote:
| yeah, had no idea what that word jumble was meant to convey..
| hermitcrab wrote:
| It is just a slighly classier (and more expensive) version of
| this:
|
| https://successfulsoftware.net/2025/07/11/pay-to-play-the-ug...
| moadel_111 wrote:
| For me they always seemed as if a Wall Street Analyst is
| reviewing hardware
| tootie wrote:
| Failure to make accurate predictions about the tech market is
| hardly evidence of grift. It's just really hard to do well. In
| areas that I'm most familiar with Gartner broadly comports with
| my own experience. It definitely favors entrenched players
| probably because they have so many case studies but honestly that
| heavily influences procurement teams too. There's always a strong
| thread of "let's buy what our competitors bought last year" and
| Gartner can reinforce that. As much as anything it's cover for a
| decision making process that's very difficult for a lot of orgs.
| That's valuable even if it's not very scientific.
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