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

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.

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.

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.

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.