> “Dilbert” was a war cry against the management class — the system of deluded jerks you work for who think they know better. Workers posted it on their cubicles like resistance fighters chalking V’s on walls in occupied Paris. But their bosses posted “Dilbert” in their offices too, since they also had a boss who was an idiot.
When in the 1990s-00s people posted Dilbert strips, it wasn't, IME, because they identified with the character Dilbert.
They did it because they saw in their work environment echoes of the environment portrayed in the comic, of which Dilbert was as much a part as the PHB.
For what it's worth, the only company where I posted Dilbert art (two animation cels that my wife bought for me from eBay) was nothing like the Dilbert world. It's just that I loved Dilbert and I thought it was a funny decoration.
Someone told me early in my career that the longer you work in an office, the more Office Space transforms from a comedy to a documentary. They weren't wrong...
The day before the night I first saw Office Space, way after becoming an underground hit, I had my first encounter with the TPS communication barrage. It made the movie funnier and my work life sadder.
Yeah that. Some ethics and management training programmes leveraged it because they thought it was popular. I still have a dilbert ethics training certificate somewhere as a reminder of how fucked up corp culture is.
American corp in Europe for ref. Defence. Absolute top tier stereotype asshats.
There is a Dilbert takeaway i use at work today: the only thing an employee really wants is more money for the same work/pain, or less work/pain for the same money. I dont do trinkets and titles. My people get as much time off as i can provide, and i will sign most anything that means they get paid a little more.
Titles are useful, because they are essentially free to the company, and (some) employees value them. And valuing titles can be rational, even if worker herself doesn't care, because they can look good on the CV and to friends and families.
Some 'trinkets' are worth more to the employees than they cost the company to provide. So it's rational to provide them. Think of Wally's beloved coffee for an example. Or look at Googlers' lunch.
I believe a lot of workers want a fulfilling career, a sense of purpose and the knowledge their work matters. After they have their material needs covered, other aspects start becoming dominant.
Cubicle, you say? LUXURY! We had to code 12 of us to a desk inside a cardboard box in the middle of the road. At the end of every day, Pointed-Haired Boss would replace us with A.I. and fire us, only to re-hire us the next day at half the salary.
The open workroom was a relatively short fad pioneered by Frank Lloyd Wright. If you look at office buildings before that, they're much more similar to houses and apartments. Lots of rooms connected by hallways, staircases, and atriums. You can imagine the difficulty and expense of lighting a large open space without electricity.
> “Dilbert” was a war cry against the management class — the system of deluded jerks you work for who think they know better. Workers posted it on their cubicles like resistance fighters chalking V’s on walls in occupied Paris. But their bosses posted “Dilbert” in their offices too, since they also had a boss who was an idiot.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/16/opinion/dilbert-scott-ada...