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Comment by the_mitsuhiko | Hacker News Reader

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® Magic Quadrant™ 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

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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.

I was aware of years ago parallel Forrester and Gartner evaluations of a new product my company was building. Forrester went through it in detail, even measuring number of clicks to access features and so forth. Gartner just did it all based on existing company reputation.

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.

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.

> there are several

If by “several” you mean well over 100, then yes.

Over 100 just for the AI market?

It wouldn't surprise me that much. But no, I meant total.

Sure is magic for Gartner Inc.'s revenues... not so much for buyers.

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.

The problem with sales and marketing is they kinda can’t keep their mouth shut. It’s a problem.

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.

Every few years when I’ve gotten incredibly desperate I’ve gone on the Gartner site, then after looking at their average data vis artifacts, I realize it’s useless. But, I bet those major awards they give out put companies’ young employees in awe.

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