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Comment by llm_nerd | Hacker News Reader

"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.

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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.

(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 :)

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.

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.

"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.

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.

I'm waiting for the OP to make an incorrect decision, but justify it because he vibed it on X and from a YouTuber.

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.

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