IT Is Not a Series of Checkboxes
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@dafyre said:
TBH, I'm not sure sure what it is either... I've just heard @scottalanmiller rail on them a time or two about being paid to give us good review type folks.
Oh ok. I don't really trust anything any more. It sucks that you have to do a lot of research to even find the legitimacy of news articles let alone large technological decisions.
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@johnhooks said:
@dafyre said:
@johnhooks I thought that is what the Gartner's Magic Quadrant was?
I had to look that up. I had never heard that before.
They are actually super well known. In IT circles they are often regarded as the gold standard for telling people what they need to do. The problem is that they are just a marketing firm masquerading as a neutral research firm. They are paid huge money by companies to product "research" that is carefully crafted to make their customers look good while making the competition look bad. It's the worst marketing because it is the hardest to identify as being marketing. But marketing it is.
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I think, @johnhooks has a valid point... These days, how do you fact check the talking heads? (both news and tech wise)
They have people that work full time helping them figure out what words to say about each topic... Us folks who are stuck in the tech world (and other long-working professionals -- Police, EMS folks, Docs, etc) don't have time to review every piece of news that is put in front of us, much less research it on our own.
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Common Gartner tactics include:
- Not included the most competitive options. Like if you are an AV company and you want to look good, to pay Gartner to not include Webroot on the list so that someone isn't clearly better than you.
- Using things no one cares about as the guideline for quality. Like how "yellow" the chassis is or "ability to withstand elephants standing on it" or whatever. It is super easy to skew any given review if you control the axis to make anyone that you want look good.
Gartner's entire business is built around duping IT pros. IT pros are famously poor at identifying when they are being sold something or when they are seeing marketing instead of market research or just trusting people who are pretty clearly trying to take advantage of them. Gartner is one of the most insidious means of this - so good that most of the time you'll actually find people (especially in a certain other community) referring to them as if they are the pinnacle of research rather than a marketing firm playing them like fiddles.
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@dafyre said:
I think, @johnhooks has a valid point... These days, how do you fact check the talking heads? (both news and tech wise)
They have people that work full time helping them figure out what words to say about each topic... Us folks who are stuck in the tech world (and other long-working professionals -- Police, EMS folks, Docs, etc) don't have time to review every piece of news that is put in front of us, much less research it on our own.
Should not need to. Rarely do these things lie, they let you lie to yourself. Train yourself not to "fill in the blanks." If a "Magic Quadrant" leaves out Webroot, don't real into that and think "not good enough to make the list" think "was so good that it was a thread and didn't pay to get included."
Lying about products is illegal and it does not happen often. But there is nothing illegal about convincing people to react emotionally to advertising or to getting them to fill in "what they want to hear."
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Here is a famous example that is a really, really good marketing move from the FreeNAS community that I see repeated often, highlighting just how much the person saying it has missed the mark: "In order for FreeNAS to manage your disks, you need to not use a hardware RAID controller and instead use ZFS software RAID." *
Where is the trick? It is here: in order for FreeNAS to manage your disks. At no point did they say that this is necessary. They didn't even suggest that it is a good thing or that you would want it. They don't discuss if there is any value here at all. They let you make that assumption and fill in the gaps so that they do nothing but provide accurate information and you turn it into marketing by not actually listening to what they said. I see this quoted constantly after someone has said that this is where FreeNAS states that you have to use software RAID, but it implies nothing of the sort. For me, when I read it, I don't see it recommending software RAID at all, the words just don't say that. They say, if you look closely, "If you want X, do Y." It's completely up to you to figure out if you want X.
- Rough quote, not word for word.
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Here is another way to look at this kind of thing:
"If you want to be hit by a car, step into traffic."
This is dramatic enough that your mind makes you say "ah, he is being facetious and means to warn you away from doing that thing" because clearly, you don't want to be hit by a car.
But when said in the middle of a technical discussion about something that "sounds reasonable" as an option (and it is) then our mind fills in more than is said. Take time to think critically about statements to see if they really say what we assume or if they are just saying something that isn't important allowing us to lead ourselves where we think someone wants us to go.
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@dafyre said:
I think, @johnhooks has a valid point... These days, how do you fact check the talking heads? (both news and tech wise)
They have people that work full time helping them figure out what words to say about each topic... Us folks who are stuck in the tech world (and other long-working professionals -- Police, EMS folks, Docs, etc) don't have time to review every piece of news that is put in front of us, much less research it on our own.
Learn who to trust for research, marketing firms are not those companies
Nothing wrong with sales or marketing, just don't confuse them with research companies. It is extremely common in IT especially for people to not recognize other IT professionals (how many people answer Bill Gates or Steve Jobs as IT Heroes, even though neither worked in IT!!) even outside of situations where they are potentially being misled. Figuring out who works in IT, is providing less biased or at least "in your interest" advise and really looking into things, asking questions, critical thinking... at the end of the day it has to be a mix of these things combined with learning to recognize marketing and hear it for what it is. This is a general life skill, not just an IT one. -
I need a series of "how I hear it" marketing interpretations but here is one that I like:
Marketing: 9 out of 10 dentists recommend toothpaste X.
What I Hear: Likely 90% of dentists say it doesn't matter what you use as long as you use something, 10% say definitely don't use toothpaste X.
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@scottalanmiller said:
I need a series of "how I hear it" marketing interpretations but here is one that I like:
Marketing: 9 out of 10 dentists recommend toothpaste X.
What I Hear: Likely 90% of dentists say it doesn't matter what you use as long as you use something, 10% say definitely don't use toothpaste X.
Saw this today and thought of this thread...
