He captures our workplace frustrations with dead-on accuracy. He knows all about the technophobic vice president, the fascist information systems supervisor, and even the big, stubborn, dumb guy. How does he do it? How does he know? It's downright spooky. Scott Adams, get out of our heads!
The notion that Dilbert creator Scott Adams has secretly bugged every office, cubicle, and conference room in America-a belief widely held by Dilbert fans-has been debunked by pointy-haired experts. This discovery leads to an even more sinister yet inescapable conclusion: that the lunacy you thought was unique to your workplace is spreading with a viral malignancy across the nation's business landscape.
Yes, the Corporate America brand of insanity has garnered a majority market share among white-collar managers and so-called leaders at companies large and small. Product features (let's not call them "benefits") of this insanity include inflated executive salaries, irrelevant performance objectives, insipid management fads, inscrutable e-mail, interminable meetings, and oppressive work environments.
Dilbert is the inadvertent poster child for the Corporate America brand. In The Fluorescent Light Glistens Off Your Head, he and his power-hungry dog, Dogbert, provide much-needed comic relief to working stiffs toiling in cubicles everywhere.
Scott Adams was a defining voice of the American white-collar experience who transitioned from a prominent cartoonist into a polarizing political commentator. After earning an MBA from UC Berkeley and spending years in management at Pacific Bell, Adams launched the comic strip Dilbert in 1989. The strip’s sharp satire of corporate bureaucracy and the "Dilbert Principle"—the idea that incompetent employees are promoted to management to minimize their damage—resonated globally, eventually appearing in 2,000 newspapers and winning the prestigious Reuben Award. Beyond the funny pages, Adams explored philosophy and persuasion in works like God's Debris and Win Bigly, the latter of which analyzed Donald Trump’s rhetorical strategies during the 2016 election. His career took a dramatic turn during the mid-2010s as he shifted focus to his daily "Real Coffee" livestream, where he combined his background in hypnosis and corporate strategy to comment on the "culture wars." This period of independent commentary culminated in 2023 when he reacted to a poll regarding racial tensions with a series of inflammatory remarks. Labeling Black Americans a "hate group" and advocating for racial segregation, Adams faced immediate and widespread repercussions; hundreds of newspapers dropped his strip, and his publisher canceled his upcoming projects. Undeterred, he moved his work to the subscription-based platform Locals, rebranding his comic as Dilbert Reborn. In his final years, he faced severe health challenges, including stage IV prostate cancer and vocal cord issues, yet he remained a prolific presence on social media. He eventually announced the end of his hand-drawn work due to focal dystonia but continued to direct the strip's vision. Adams’s legacy remains a complex study in the power of branding, the evolution of digital influence, and the volatile intersection of creative genius and political provocation in the modern era.
I read a lot of Dilbert collections, and I always get a kick out of them. It reminds me of the jobs I had in various office settings. There is a lot of nonfiction within this comic strip…
The Pointy-Haired Boss has plenty of advice for his inferior engineering employees, and he's sure he can provide everything they need...so long as everything Dilbert and the gang needs fits the budget...if he can just remember the budget...and who actually works for him...Adams brings fans another bout of all too relatable humour that is sure to keep readers smiling with every crack and punchline. Dilbert is starting to wonder if there ever has been a set of standards amongst his workplace...
We all might have started out like Calvin with a great view of life. But after hitting the workforce we all somewhat become Dilbert. Everyone knows someone like one of the characters in the strips. Highly recommended