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> This was the world of Dilbert’s rise. You’d put a Dilbert comic on your cubicle wall, and feel like you’d gotten away with something My former manager used t
by martinpw 9mo ago
> This was the world of Dilbert’s rise. You’d put a Dilbert comic on your cubicle wall, and feel like you’d gotten away with something
My former manager used to have Dilbert comic strips on his wall. It always puzzled me - was it self deprecating humor? At a certain point though it became clear that in his mind the PHB was one layer ABOVE him in the management chain and not anyone at his level. I suspect it may be a recursive pattern.
- cainxinth 9mo agoFrom a recent NYTimes article about his passing: > “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-adams-maga.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/16/opinion/dilbert-scott-ada...
- catoc 9mo agohttps://archive.is/9JVkU https://archive.is/9JVkU
- raverbashing 9mo agoAnd while we don't have cubicles and TPS reports anymore, people have different grievances and ways of expressing their cynicism. History does not repeat but it rhymes indeed
- seanmcdirmid 9mo agoWe don’t even have cubicles anymore, it’s all everyone shoved onto the same table now.
- steveBK123 9mo agoIndeed it’s telling how bad things haven gotten that many would yearn for the cubicle now
- ghaff 9mo agoWell, and pre-cubicles, it was just a bunch of tables in a big room surrounded by managers in offices.
- AlotOfReading 9mo agoThe 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.
- pm3003 9mo agoIn Europe I see a lot of companies with open space workrooms with some cubicles, maybe 30-40% of workers at those companies seem to work in them.
- coldtea 9mo agoNo, it wasn't. Most companies had separate offices, individual or with 2-4 desks in them.
- userbinator 9mo agoThere are still many companies with cubicles, although they do seem to be getting rarer.
- heresie-dabord 9mo agoCubicle, 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. (With apologies to:) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Yorkshiremen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Yorkshiremen
- paulpauper 9mo agoeven worse lol it's like "I hear you hate cubicles, so we can solve the cubicle problem and save money at the same time"
- ivell 9mo agoWith clean desk policies in some organizations, you would be lucky to have a seat. Initial 5-10 minutes are spent on finding a place to sit.
- BobbyTables2 9mo agoNext, they’ll get rid of the table…
- sul_tasto 9mo agolike cage free eggs
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- rbanffy 9mo agoI used to say seeing Dilbert strips in the office is a warning sign. People shouldn’t identify with Dilbert.
- dragonwriter 9mo agoWhen 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.
- michaelcampbell 9mo agoAll of us did in the day, and most of the strips were common from multiple people for a given office, for the obvious reason. This seemed so blatantly obvious (and the answer if asked "why did you put this one up?") that I'm agog at anyone thinking otherwise.
- dgxyz 9mo agoYeah 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.
- sandworm101 9mo agoThere 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.
- eru 9mo agoTitles 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.
- da02 9mo agoDid you ever encounter a well managed (or well functioning) team(s)? If so, why do you think they performed so well?
- shadowgovt 9mo agoGreat question. The best team I can name had these things going for them: - Constrained scope (they were the UI team on an internal product; by the time they got their marching orders the whole thing was a very well understood problem domain) - Excellent manager (he has infinite calm, deep empathy for the fact that real people are messy and complicated, and an incredible nose for time estimates). There was basically no amount of pressure up-chain could put on him that would shake his cool; he seems to be completely confident internally that the worst-case scenario is he goes and lands on his feet somewhere else. As a result, his team was basically always happy and high-performing and he consistently missed up-chain expectations set by project managers above him who had to consistently report that UI wasn't going to be delivered on the timeline they set because they had taken his estimates and shaved three weeks off of them, only to discover that the estimates were dead-on and they were the liars. He was insulated from this by (a) keeping consistently good notes on his initial estimates, everything that bumped them, and the final deliverable dates and (b) having skip-level meetings where he could present all of this to his boss's boss clearly.
- tayo42 9mo agoI had a period where I was on a team like that. We didn't have a manager. Though some of my worst work periods was when I didn't have a manager either lol.
- duskwuff 9mo agoI'm reminded of the story of Graphing Calculator: "His contract in another division at Apple had just ended, so he told his manager that he would start reporting to me. She didn't ask who I was and let him keep his office and badge. In turn, I told people that I was reporting to him. Since that left no managers in the loop, we had no meetings and could be extremely productive." - https://www.pacifict.com/story/ https://www.pacifict.com/story/
- yojo 9mo agoMy former manager organized an offsite where we all watched Office Space together. Did she just not get it? Or did she get it, and it was some weird flex making us watch it with her? I still don’t know.
- tsunamifury 9mo agoDid you not realize we’ve built a system where everyone is both oppressor and oppressed. Did you not think she too had an idiot boss?
- helterskelter 9mo agoShit rolls downhill...and most people just try to keep an eye on where the next turd comes from without bothering to watch where it goes after it's past them.
- wordpad 9mo agoThat's... So wise... Where is that from
- tejtm 9mo agofrom how to be a plumber -- Shit flows downhill, payday is on Friday.
- buildsjets 9mo agoYou forgot the most important rule of plumbing: Don’t bite your fingernails.
- booleandilemma 9mo agoNot enough people realize this, unfortunately. If they did our system would be flatter than it currently is. You wouldn't have "peaks", so to speak.
- crazygringo 9mo agoPeople can play a role and clearly see the role they play as well. Plenty of managers see the absurdity in a lot of what they have to do, but it's mandated by the people above them.
- tokai 9mo ago[flagged]
- analog8374 9mo agoI think everybody, with few exceptions, is in the system involuntarily. And also you can't say that that you don't want to be in the system. You have to fake it very hard if you want to "win". You have to demonstrate "passion" and such. My boss refused to allow people to call him boss, for example. He really hated the system.
- setsewerd 9mo ago"I'm a regular boss, I'm a cool boss. You can just call me Stan" Probably not how you meant it but I chuckled.
- dfxm12 9mo agoIt speaks to a general lack of self awareness people have about class/power structures.
- 1over137 9mo agoPHB?
- lanyard-textile 9mo agoPointy Haired Boss :)
- coldtea 9mo agoWell, PHB is not about simply being a manager, but about being a certain type of manager, so he might very well be justified in his wall decoration.
- HPsquared 9mo agoIt's PHBs all the way up.
- barrysaunders 9mo agoAny truly popular art relies on finding an emotional hook that’s specific enough to identify with strongly but broad enough that most people can see themselves in it. Everyone’s felt their boss is an asshole and their underlings are idiots, so they identify with that emotion rather than the specifics of Dilbert being an engineer. Most of Dilbert’s complaints map pretty well to the conflict between any other kind of individual contributor role dealing with management.