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> These clowns want $2500 goddamned american dollars for the privilege of reading their bloviations on this topic, which i absolutely will not pay. You aren’t

> These clowns want $2500 goddamned american dollars for the privilege of reading their bloviations on this topic, which i absolutely will not pay. You aren’t the target market for their “bloviations” - they are targeted at executives, and it isn’t like the executive pays this out of their own pocket, there is a budget and it comes out of the budget. Plus these reports generally aren’t aimed at technical people with significant pre-existing understanding of the field, their audience is more “I’m expected to make decisions about this topic but they didn’t cover it in my MBA”, or even “I need some convincing-sounding talking points to put in my slides for the board meeting, and if I cite an outside analyst they can’t argue with that” Commonly with these reports a company buys a copy and then it can be freely shared within the company. Also $2,500 is likely just the list price and if you are a regular customer you’ll get a discount, or even find you’ve already paid for this report as part of some kind of subscription

jcgrillo 2y ago
Anyone prioritizing this nerfed, mindless dogshit over what their team is telling them and what's going on in the world around them is both an incompetent leader and a total idiot
- skissane 2y ago
  A lot of the people paying for these analyst firm reports are sales people-so they can pass them on to their customers/prospects (to legally do that you often have to pay extra for “redistribution rights”)… and then the customer/prospect gets to read it for free Who might not have much of an engineering team, or not one with relevant expertise… and why should they trust the vendor’s engineering team? If they are about to sign a contract for $$$, being able to find support for it in an independent analyst report can psychologically help a lot in the sales cycle While the most useful reports for sales are those which directly compare products, like Gartner Magic Quadrant or Forrester Wave - a powerful tool if you come out on top - these kind of more background reports can help if the sales challenge is less “whose product should I buy?” and more “do I even need one of these products? should we be investing money in this?”
airplaneears 2y ago
[flagged]
- skissane 2y ago
  It has never paid my bills, in that I've never worked for an analyst firm. My bills have been paid by working for vendors, where I have seen how sales and marketing use their reports in action. I have seen the amount of effort engineering and product management put in to try to present the best possible vision of their product and its future potential to these analysts. (I've never been personally directly involved in any of those activities though, I've just observed them from the margins.) But, it isn't like the vendors have a huge amount of choice – if you refuse to engage with the analysts and utilise their reports in your sales cycle, what happens when your competitors do?

jcgrillo 2y ago

Anyone prioritizing this nerfed, mindless dogshit over what their team is telling them and what's going on in the world around them is both an incompetent leader and a total idiot

skissane 2y ago
A lot of the people paying for these analyst firm reports are sales people-so they can pass them on to their customers/prospects (to legally do that you often have to pay extra for “redistribution rights”)… and then the customer/prospect gets to read it for free Who might not have much of an engineering team, or not one with relevant expertise… and why should they trust the vendor’s engineering team? If they are about to sign a contract for $$$, being able to find support for it in an independent analyst report can psychologically help a lot in the sales cycle While the most useful reports for sales are those which directly compare products, like Gartner Magic Quadrant or Forrester Wave - a powerful tool if you come out on top - these kind of more background reports can help if the sales challenge is less “whose product should I buy?” and more “do I even need one of these products? should we be investing money in this?”

airplaneears 2y ago

[flagged]

skissane 2y ago
It has never paid my bills, in that I've never worked for an analyst firm. My bills have been paid by working for vendors, where I have seen how sales and marketing use their reports in action. I have seen the amount of effort engineering and product management put in to try to present the best possible vision of their product and its future potential to these analysts. (I've never been personally directly involved in any of those activities though, I've just observed them from the margins.) But, it isn't like the vendors have a huge amount of choice – if you refuse to engage with the analysts and utilise their reports in your sales cycle, what happens when your competitors do?